I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.; 

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,^ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE 



GOOD AND EVIL 



BY 

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J. H. M'lLVAINE. 



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ITT / ♦-I I • I" V • t 

*YK SHALL BE AS GODS, KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL." 



NEW YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY M. W. DODD, 

BRICK CHURCH CHAPEL, CORNER OF PARK ROW AND SPRUCE ST., 

Opposite the City Hall. 



MDCCCXLVII. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, by 

JOSHUA H. M'lLVAINE, 

In the Clerk's Office op the District Court for the Northern 
District of New York. 



ROBERT CRAIGHEAD, PRINTER, 
112 FULTON STREET. 



PREFACE. 



The writer of this little volume would gladly apologize for its 
publication, but he well knows that the only apology which 
can be satisfactory must be found in the book itself; that, if it 
be not found there, it were vain to offer it here. Yet, perhaps, it 
may be of advantage to know something of the character and 
object of the following pages before they are read. 

To some the views presented in this brief treatise may bear 
an appearance of originality to which they are not entitled ; 
others may be offended by a seeming novelty in that which is not 
new. For they exhibit those events in the Scriptural history of 
man which are connected with the fatal " tree of the knowledge 
of good and evil," not merely as facts, but also as facts which are 
immensely significant. But it must be remembered that there is 
hardly any commentary, ancient or modern, in which it is not as- 
sumed that most of those events have a symbolical and significant 
character. Every Christian child is taught to regard the curse 
pronounced upon the serpent as a symbol under which is set forth 
God's judgment upon " that old serpent, that is the devil ;" and 
under which is given the first promise of redemption through the 
" Seed of the Woman." In the following pages an attempt is 
made to justify upon acknowledged principles this way of view- 
ing those events ; and at the same time to vindicate their claim 
to be facts which actually occurred as they are recorded. 

But this little volume is principally the fruit of an earnest de- 
sire to relieve the minds of sincere people from difficulties in 



respect to some of the mysteries of the Word of God — difficul- 
ties from which the writer himself has greatly suffered, and from 
which so many suffer in this age of rationalistic and infidel phi- 
losophy. This he has sought to do, not by explaining them 
away, but by exhibiting as clearly as he could, the principle by 
which they are to be justified as mysteries. The fundamental 
idea of all the views presented is that the wisdom of man, as a 
criterion of distinction between good and evil, is, of itself, fool- 
ishness ; and that the Wisdom of God alone is true wisdom. But 
in order to set forth and illustrate this truth, it was necessary to 
discuss other subordinate topics, each of which is intended to 
have a practical moral and spiritual eflect of its own. Indeed it 
is the hope of the writer that the book may be judged by its 
spirit rather than by the intellectual form in which that spirit is 
embodied. 

If then the reader has ever found himself embarrassed by the 
Scriptural use of types and symbols ; if it has ever occurred to him 
that the account of a " talking snake" in the temptation of man, 
is an improbable story ; if the blasphemy of the infidel sneering 
at the account which God has given of the sin and fall of 
man, has ever disturbed him ; if the mystery of the atonement, 
made by the sacrifice of the Innocent for the guilty, has caused 
him to offend ; — perhaps upon these and other points he may find 
some relief from the following pages. And if, on rising from 
their perusal, he sees more clearly, and feels more deeply, than 
before, that his own views of things are to be thrown away as 
folly, and those which God gives in his Word to be adopted as 
the right ones in their stead ; that the law of God is holy, just 
and good ; that the practical wisdom revealed through the con- 
science, distinguishing between right and wrong, is paramount 
over all other forms of the wisdom and prudence of man ; that 
the Eternal Spirit, in his power and agency, is a " very present 
God," upon whom he is dependent in a most vital sense ; that all 
earthly and visible things are unsubstantial and fleeting shadows 
compared with the substantial being and eternal permanency of 
the unseen and spiritual things of the kingdom of God ; that the 



PREFACE. V 

mutual relations between the parent and child, and of marriage, 
are hallowed, purified and exalted in his eyes ; that children are 
to be trained up in the submission and obedience of faith, reve- 
rence and love, and not in that of sight and reasoning ; that " the 
carnal mind" is an accursed enemy of God ; that the chastise- 
ments of labor, sorrow and death are holy things, to be submitted 
to in penitence and in faith ; that the atonement of Christ is the 
only salvation for him ; that he must be crucified with Christ in 
order to live and reign with him ; that his own strength, or the 
obedience of his own agency, is utterly in vain to save him from 
the curse and power of sin ; that the agency and obedience of 
Christ in and for him are all-sufficient to restore and perfect his 
spiritual life, and to bring into him an " everlasting righteous- 
ness ;" — if he finds any of these effects produced upon his mind 
and heart, let him give the praise and the glory to Him whose 
blood cleanseth us from all sin, 

J^ay 3, 1847. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 
OF SYMBOLS ...... 1 

CHAPTER H. 

OF THE SYMBOLS OF THE WORD OF GOD . . 10 

CHAPTER HI. 

OF THE SYMBOLICAL CHARACTER OF THE SCRIPTURAL 

ACCOUNT OF THE SIN AND FALL OF MAN . . ' 22 

CHAPTER IV. 

OF THE CREATION OF MAN . . . .30 

CHAPTER V. 

OF THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN .... 40 

CHAPTER VI. 

OF THE TWOFOLD NATURE OF MAN ... 49 

CHAPTER VII. 

OF MARRIAGE . . . . . .62 

CHAPTER VIII. 

OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OP PARADISE ... 78 

CHAPTER IX. 

OF THE SUBTLETY OF THE SERPENT . . . 100 

CHAPTER X. 

OF THE SIN OF MAN . -. . .111 



Vlll CONTENTS* 

CHAPTER XT. 

OF THE GIRDI^E OF FIG LEAVES . . . . J41 

CHAPTER XH. 

OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT . . .159 

CHAPTER XHI. 

OF THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN . . .175 

CHAPTER XIV. 

OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN .... 190 

CHAPTER XV. 

OF THE CLOTHING OF SXINS .... 210 

CHAPTER XVI. 

OF THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE . . . 229 



CHAPTER L 



OF SYMBOLS. 



Every form of religious belief that has ever ap- 
peared in the v^orld has expressed itself in sensible 
representations. The Hindoo, the Egyptian, the 
Greek, the Mohammedan, and the Christian, all alike, 
have set forth the mysteries of their faith and life by 
means of symbols. From what has this fact 
arisen ? 

A shallow^ and sensual philosophy attempts to render 
an account of this universal phenomenon by the sup- 
position of priestcraft. It gives for the object of the 
symbols of religion the veiling of the truth from the 
masses of the people, that the power of superior in- 
telligence might be enjoyed exclusively among the 
initiated. It cannot be denied that symbols have 
been perverted to serve this purpose. But it does 
not follow that they have no higher origin than the 
knavery of priests, and no better use than to keep 
the people in ignorance and awe. Where they have 
been thus perverted, it has been by the abuse of the 
principle from which they arise, and which has its 
seat in the very nature and constitution of man. 

For the life of man is constituted in the synthesis 
1 



2 OF SYMBOLS. 

or union of a spiritual and a material nature. In like 
manner it is found to be a fact, that whatever ad- 
dresses man with life and power is also constituted 
of what may be called body and soul, or form and 
substance, or letter and spirit. Body without soul, 
form without substance, letter without spirit, is dead 
for him — powerless over his heart and life. No less 
is spirit conceived of without the letter, substance 
without form, soul without body, or any manifesta- 
tion whatever, dead for man. It is a lifeless abstrac- 
tion. 

For this reason it is that purely philosophical sys- 
tems have always been so powerless to affect and 
mould the life of the human race. Plato, no less 
than the more profound and metaphysical Bramins, 
gives us only science without life. For this reason, 
when Jehovah would affect the will and life of man 
with power, his Spirit assumes a form, a sensible 
manifestation, as the Angel of the Covenant, in the 
burning bush, as Jehovah between the Cherubim, 
whose form was light, and as Immanuel, God with us, 
in Jesus of Nazareth. The very nature of man re- 
quires that the Truth should become incarnate in 
order to reach him with power, and become life to 
his soul. For this reason also it was necessary that 
the Church, which is now the body of the Spirit of 
God in the world, should never for one moment be- 
come extinct, otherwise a new incarnation would be 
necessary to restore it to life. For the truths of the 
Word of God, no less than other ideas, are always 
found to be powerless over the heart of man where- 



OF SYMBOLS. 



soever the Church has ceased to be a body animated 
by them. Each member of the Church was intended 
to be a Hving word of God, an epistle of Christ, 
through whom his perfections should be manifested 
to the world in life with power. 

Out of the feeling of this lifeless nature of mere 
ideas, however true and just, arises a universal desire 
in man to give some sensible expression, some body- 
ing-forth, to whatever lives and moves within him. 
From this come gesture and action in speaking. 
When we speak in earnest, with feeling, we are not 
satisfied with words alone. We would express what 
we feel to the eye as well as to the ear. Ideas and 
emotions thus expressed have a life and life-giving 
power for others unspeakably greater than anything 
that can be found in mere words. Moved by this 
desire the true artist toils with subHme devotion to 
give a form, a sensible manifestation to the ideas and 
emotions of beauty with which he feels himself to be 
filled and inspired. Thus comes into existence an 
Iliad, a Phidian Jupiter, a Venus di Medici, a Stras- 
burg cathedral. 

Nor can any idea or emotion which is living in 
man rest satisfied until it either finds itself reflected, 
or reflects itself, in some outward manner. Not 
being able to find this reflection, nor allowed to ex- 
press itself externally, it soon dies. He who denies 
to himself all expression of falsehood soon loses the 
desire to deceive however strong it may have been. 
He who restrains impure ideas and feelings from all 
possible expression and act, soon finds them perishing 



4 OF SYMBOLS. 

out of his heart and mind. The love of God not be- 
ing permitted to go out at all in acts of religious wor- 
ship, the love of our neighbor imprisoned in the heart, 
if that could be, must soon perish. 

Whatever there may be in man vv^hich craves no 
outv^ard expression, which moves not, is already 
dead. It is because the religious ideas of the deist 
are dead and powerless over his heart and life that 
they can be satisfied without any expression, any 
bodying-forth, in acts of religious worship. It is be- 
cause the religion of Jesus Christ was not dead, but 
living, that he fasted and prayed in words and in ap- 
propriate bodily positions. When he prayed he stood 
up, or kneeled down, or fell on his face. When he 
gave thanks for the bread that he had received from 
his heavenly Father, he raised his eyes to heaven. 
When he communicated his Holy Spirit to his dis- 
ciples he breathed on them ; as, when he created 
man, and imparted to him his soul, he is said to have 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. 

Some external manifestation or expression or re- 
flection of man's inward life, of the truth by which 
he lives, is absolutely necessary to nourish and sup- 
port it. Without this he cannot live, much less be 
satisfied. He feels the dead and powerless nature of 
mere ideas and abstractions. These are to him but 
a " lumen siccum'' a dry light. He feels the want, 
for himself and others, of an expression to the senses, 
of a bodily form and reflection of the ideas and emo- 
tions by which he finds himself to be powerfully 
moved, and by which he desires to move others. 



OF SYMBOLS. O 

Neither is he satisfied with mere words. He must 
seek to express himself to the other senses as well as 
to the ear, that he may reach the whole man in 
others ; that what he knows and feels may have for 
himself and them a superior life and power. 

This is a fact or trait of the constitution of man to 
be verified by observing its manifestations in all 
ages and countries, and by each man's experience. 
In it is to be found the true solution of the origin and 
use of symbolical representations. For a symbol is 
a bodying-forth or representation to the senses of 
ideas and emotions as these are found in the myste- 
ries of life. Every act of man, therefore, as a signi- 
ficant expression of the ideas and feelings from which 
it springs, is a symbol. Every work of art, every 
rite and ceremony of religion, is a symbol. The ap- 
plause of the hands is the symbol of approbation, the 
hiss, of disapprobation. The smile is a symbol of 
pleasure ; the frown, the falling of the countenance, 
of wrath and displeasure. Standing in prayer is 
the symbol of reverence ; kneeling, of reverence 
and humility. Sitting in prayer is the denial to 
these feelings of their appropriate outward expres- 
sion, and tends most powerfully, though subtly, to 
destroy them. 

Also, since the symbol has its origin in the going 
forth of that which is within to represent itself with- 
out, some feelings may be taken as the symbols of 
others which are more inward and spiritual than 
themselves. For example, the love of the dutiful child 
to his parents is taken in the Word of God as a symbol 



b OF SYMBOLS. 

of the love which man should feel towards God his 
heavenly Father. The pleasures of the senses thus 
become symbols of spiritual joys, for which purpose 
they are used where it is said, God smelted a sweet 
savor from the sacrifice of Noah, and where David 
says, How sweet are thy words to my taste^ yea, 
sweeter than honey to my mouth. Thus, also, the 
conscious degradation and spiritual shame of remorse, 
which arose in man as soon as he had sinned, went 
forth and symbolized itself in the shame of his naked 
body. 

The superior life and force which symbolical 
representations have for man over mere expressions 
in words, may be perceived by the following illus- 
trations and examples. 

The spirit and life of the ancient Romans was the 
genius of war and conquest.* When, therefore, they 
received the ambassadors of foreign nations, they 
sought for some means of expressing to them the 
ideas and feelings upon this subject, which were uni- 
versal and prominent among these iron republicans. 
These were, that the Roman was invincible ; that but 
one result was ever anticipated at Rome of all wars 
in which the republic might become involved ; that 
in all conflicts which could arise between her and 
other nations, they must expect to be conquered. 
To express these more powerfully than it was possi- 
ble to do in mere words, the Roman people gave 
audience to foreign ambassadors in the temple of 
Victory. 

Also, when their armies had gained a battle, they 



OF SYMBOLS. 7 

sought for some means of expressing, for their own 
gratification, and to impress upon the conquered, so 
that it should enter into their very Hfe, the idea and 
conviction that other nations were to them but as 
brute beasts made to be subjugated. Again they 
found the means of doing this in the language of the 
symbol. They erected upon the field of victory an 
immense wooden frame, in the form of a yoke for 
beasts of burden, under which they marched the 
remains of the conquered army, and then dismissed 
them to their homes. What words, what bulletins 
of exultation, what other means of expression could 
have had the life and power of this terrible symbol ? 

One more example will serve to illustrate the hfe 
and force of the symbols of modern times. The 
Russian coat-of-arms is a double-headed eagle, whose 
two crowned heads, surmounted by another great 
crown, turn and gaze in opposite directions. In his 
talons he holds the globe surmounted by the cross, 
and upon his breast is emblazoned an armed and 
mounted warrior. 

This is the symbol of that colossal power of the 
North, the Russian Empire. Standing at the head of 
the two continents of the earth, the old and the new, 
she looks down over each with a crowned head, to 
signify that her destiny is to rule both. The two 
heads meeting in one body, the two crowns surmount- 
ed by the one great crown, together with the single 
sceptre, show that this two-fold empire is to be con- 
solidated into one despotism. The globe in the 
talons of the eagle, surmounted by the cross, marks 



© OP SYMBOLS* 

its extent, and shows what its rehgion is to be ; that 
it is to embrace the whole world, over which is to be 
established the Christian faith. The armed and 
mounted warrior is her Cossack cavalry, the best 
and most numerous in the world, upon which she 
relies for the realization of these ideas and designs, 
which she has thus emblazoned before her whole 
population, that they may enter into its very life, and 
mould it into their likeness. This tremendous sym- 
bol, having grown up out of the character of the 
Slavonic race, which is now moving into ascendency 
among the nations, has been for a long time reflect- 
ing these ideas into the minds and hearts of the 
people, until, as travellers assure us, even the serfs 
understand that Russia is one day to be the mistress 
of the earth. 

With perfect knowledge of this trait of the consti- 
tution of man, in virtue of which he finds mere ideas 
to be dead and powerless over his heart, and feels 
the want of sensible representations of his inward 
life to nourish and sustain it, our Lord symbolized 
the fundamental truths of th§ Gospel in the sacra- 
ments of the Christian Church. For the washing 
with water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost, sets forth the defilement and pollution of the 
soul of man by sin, and his cleansing by the power 
of God, into whose Triune name he is baptized. The 
sacrament of the Eucharist is the symbol of the 
truths, that, as the bread is broken, and the wine 
poured in the sight of the faithful for them, so is the 
body of Christ broken and his blood shed for them ; 



OF SYMBOLS. 9 

as the bread is eaten and the wine drunk to nourish, 
and strengthen, and cheer the body, so is Christ cru- 
cified really and truly, though " not after a corporal 
and carnal manner," received into the souls of all 
who believe on him for the nourishment, strength, 
and consolation of their spiritual life ; and that, as 
they eat from the same platter, and drink from the 
same cup, which those only of the same family 
can do without disgust, so are they now but one 
family. These are some of the truths of the Gospel 
which have been symbolized in the sacraments by 
the Wisdom of God, that they might not perish out 
of the souls of believers, but h^ve in them a perennial 
life and power. 

These views, in which this subject is but glanced 
at, may serve, perhaps, in some degree to illustrate 
the legitimate origin and use, and the superior life 
and power, of symbolical representations. 



1* 



10 OF THE SYMBOLS OF THE 



CHAPTER IL 



OF THE SYMBOLS OF THE WORD OF GOD. 



" Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples ; and 
they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the 
world are come." 



The great body of believers in the Word of God 
have alw^ays regarded its historical portions as literal 
records of facts and events which occurred as they 
are narrated and described. Not unfrequently they 
are suspicious of every attempt to show a meaning 
in any part of its narratives, deeper than that which 
appears upon the surface. They are afraid lest they 
should find their Bible explained away into myths 
and allegories, such as the fables of the heathen. 
Therefore they constantly affirm the literal sense of 
what is recorded, and deny what they call a spiritual 
sense. 

Another class of readers and students of the Word 
are always seeking to pierce through the literal sense 
after something more profound and spiritual. These 
are often unwilling to regard a given narrative as a 
record of facts and events. For them it must be left 
free to convey an allegorical sense which is often 
inconsistent vv^ith the literal one. In their eyes the 
Word seems degraded when its histories are literally 



WORD OF GOD. 11 

understood. The account given of the fall of man, 
the book of the prophet Jonah, are some of those 
narratives which they would interpret as pure alle- 
gories. Origen among the Fathers, Swedenborg 
and even Coleridge among the moderns, are speci- 
mens of this class. 

Here, as in so many other cases of conflicting 
views, it would seem that both parties are perfectly 
right in what they affirm, and both equally wrong in 
what they deny. For, according to St. Augustin, 
the narrative parts of the Word of God are both 
historical and symbolical. They are truly the 
records of facts and events which occurred as they 
are narrated and described. But these facts and 
events are not barren. They are pregnant with spi- 
ritual truth — truth alike for all times and place, uni- 
versal for man. Of this truth the facts and events 
which are recorded are but as the husk or shell, the 
bodily form, the symbol. 

Each of these views, exclusive of the other, is 
narrow, incomplete, and fraught with manifest evil 
consequences. 

For he who denies to the historical portions of the 
Bible all deeper significancy than that which appears 
upon their surface, does, in fact, if he only knew it, 
deny that they are the Word of God in any higher 
sense than that in which every true history must be 
the word of Him who is Truth. He can have no 
conceivable reason why the facts and events of 
which they treat were selected to be recorded in 
preference to that innumerable multitude of others 



12 OF THE SYMBOLS OF THE 

which must have been passed over in silence. For all 
the superior importance which they can have, must 
arise from their significancy of truth universally or 
generally applicable to man in other ages and coun- 
tries, that is to say, from their symbolical character. 
He is in danger of losing that in them to impart 
which they were recorded, — their spirit, — which is 
their quickening power, and of falling into that state 
in which he must be killed by the letter. But more 
than all, he places himself in an attitude of direct 
opposition to the New Testament. For in it, as we 
shall directly see, a sense is continually drawn from 
the histories of the Old Testament very different 
from, though not inconsistent with, the literal sense, 
and which does by no means appear upon their sur- 
face. 

Through the prevalence of this exclusive view in 
our time, it has come to pass that great numbers of 
Christians do practically regard the Old Testament 
as of little more worth and dignity and power than 
any other old and true history. For them, it is 
something almost entirely done away ; while to not 
a few it is a stone of stumbling, a rock of offence. 

On the other hand, he who, seeking after a spi- 
ritual sense in these narratives, denies to them their 
literal and historical character, who regards them 
as nothing but allegories and parables, and myths, 
not only renounces the views which are always 
given of them in the New Testament, but he throws 
away the only key by which it is possible to unlock 
the treasures which they contain. He turns away 



WORD OF GOD. 13 

from the only door into the Holy of HoUes, and 
seeks to cHmb up some other way. If by chance, 
while he meditates upon them, he should light upon 
pure truth, he has nothing to assure himself or 
others that it is the truth which they were intended 
to teach. If he should discover order it may be 
but the order of his own mind. If he should per- 
ceive beauty it may be but the beauty of his own 
soul coloring with its own hues the objects upon 
which it looks. He casts himself loose upon a wide 
and dangerous sea without chart, or compass, or 
rudder. He is liable to be continually driven and 
tossed upon an infinite chaos of his own imagina- 
tions, over which the Spirit of God has never 
brooded. 

Now, that the histories of the Old Testament do 
record facts and events which occurred as they are 
narrated and described, and that these facts and 
events are to be taken as types or symbols of spi- 
ritual truth, is evident from the most positive testi- 
mony of Christ and his Apostles. 

In respect to the ritual law there is no dispute 
among Christians. That it was given to set forth 
in symbol the fundamental truths of the Gospel is 
acknowledged by all. In the New Testament it is 
continually appealed to as an authoritative teacher 
of truths afterwards to be declared in words. Of 
this one example will be sufficient. It is declared 
that the bones of the Lord were not broken upon 
the cross, as were those of his fellow-sufferers, in 
order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, that not a 



14 OF THE SYMBOLS OF THE 

hone of him should he hroken. But it is nowhere 
said that not a bone of Christ should be broken. 
This was commanded in respect to the Paschal 
Lamb. Here it is evident that what was spoken of 
this sacrifice is assumed as declared in type or sym- 
bol of Jesus of Nazareth. 

But in their expositions of the symbols of the Old 
Testament, Jesus and his Apostles do by no means 
confine themselves to the rites and ceremonies of 
the Mosaic ritual law. They take up the historical 
events, even those which occurred before that law 
was given, and expound them after the same manner, 
appealing to them as authority for the truths which 
they drew from them regarded as symbols. The 
land of Canaan, and the city of Jerusalem, are 
always taken by them as the symbols of the king- 
dom of God ; and the taking possession of these by 
the Israelites under Joshua, after the death of the 
law-giver, as the type of the believers' entering into 
the rest of holiness under Jesus, the captain of their 
salvation, after they have been delivered from the 
condemning power of the law. The manna in the 
wilderness is taken by Jesus as the symbol of the 
truth that the bread of life is nothing of earthly 
growth, the work of man's agency, where he de- 
clares, / am that hread which came down from hea- 
ven ; that is to say, I am that which is signified or 
symbolized by that bread with which your fathers 
were nourished. He refers also to the elevation of 
the brazen serpent for the healing of the children of 
Israel who had been bitten by the fiery flying ser- 



WORD OF GOD. 15 

pents in the wilderness, as a symbol of the truth that 
by his elevation upon the cross should all believers 
be healed of the poison produced by the bite of that 
old serpent, that is the devil. That it was originally 
intended for this purpose is admitted by all. Yet 
this is a purely historical event, and no way con- 
nected with the ritual law. 

Also, when the infant Redeemer under the guid- 
ance of Joseph was led out of Egypt, it is said, that 
was fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord, Out of 
Egypt have I called my Son. But this was spoken 
in the prophet of the children of Israel who were 
brought up out of Egypt under the guidance of 
Moses. The words are. When Israel was a child 
then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. 
It is evident that this exodus of Christ could fulfil 
that which was spoken of the exodus of Israel only 
in virtue of the prediction in type of the one in the 
other. He dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it 
might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, 
He shall be called a Nazarene. But this was spoken 
of Samson. That which happened to Christ could 
not fulfil what was said of this Judge and deliverer 
of his people except the one were intended to be 
prefigured by the other. It is also declared that 
Jesus rose from the dead on the third day according 
to the Scriptures. But it is not predicted in the 
Old Testament in words that the Messiah should 
rise from the dead on the third day. He himself 
refers to the history of the prophet Jonah, who was 
three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, 



16 OP THE SYMBOLS OF THE 

as the symbol under which it had been foretold that 
he should be three days and three nights in the heart 
of the earth. 

Still more clear does the symbolical character of 
the histories of the Old Testament become from St. 
Paul's treatment of the account of the mocking of 
Isaac by Ishmael. He certainly does not mean to 
deny that this is the literal history of an event which 
occurred as it is narrated. Yet he expressly de- 
clares that it is also an allegory or symbol, under 
which is set forth the external and visible church, 
when, having lost her spiritual life, she persecutes 
the children of the promise. It represents in sym- 
bol what always takes place in like circumstances, 
a truth exemplified in the times of Abraham, David, 
Jeremiah, Christ, Paul, Luther, and to the present 
day. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
undertaking professedly to expound the symbols of 
the Old Testament, takes up its historical portions 
precisely as he does the ritual law, and explains 
them in the same manner. Among these he enters 
into the History of Melchisedec as a symbol of the 
spiritual priesthood of Christ declaring that he was 
made like unto the Son of God in that he was with- 
out priestly generation, yet superior to the priesthood 
of Levi ; and in that he was king of a city 
whose name was Righteousness and Peace, as if this 
had been ordained of God that he might serve this 
symbolical or typical purpose. 

But in order to place this doctrine beyond all 
doubt, in the first epistle to the Corinthians, after 



4 
WORD OF GOD. 1*7 

having cited consecutively no less than eleven dis- 
tinct events in the history of the children of Israel, 
St. Paul declares, Now all these things happened 
unto them for ensamples (rvrroi, types is the w^ord 
translated ensamples), and they are written for our 
admonition^ upon whom the ends of the world are 
come. In these w^ords he gives a distinct and formal 
enunciation of this doctrine, w^hich is everywhere 
assumed and taught in the New Testament, that the 
events of the Old, were not only selected to be re- 
corded, but that they actually happened^ to serve as 
types or symbols of the truths of the Gospel, truths 
universal and alike applicable to the man of every 
age and country. 

One or two examples will serve to illustrate the 
life and power of these historical symbols. 

When the children of Israel had come to the bor- 
ders of the promised land, terrified by the reports 
which their spies had brought back of the gigantic 
stature and superhuman prowess of its inhabitants, 
they were discouraged and refused to go forward 
after their divine guide to possess the inheritance of 



* This is not a denial that these events arose from the free agency 
of man, as truly as any in the history of the heathen world. The 
two doctrines of man's freedom and God's preordination of whatso- 
ever comes to pass, however inconsistent they may seem in our 
eyes, are to be held in deference of our own wisdom to the wisdom 
of God, as most certain truths. That there is a point in which they 
meet and are conciliated, does not admit of a doubt. They are to be 
regarded as the two sides of a stupendous arch whose keystone is 
lost in the clouds. He who beholds the two sides, knows that they 
have a keystone, although it is above the reach of his vision. 



18 



OF THE SYMBOLS OF THE 



which they were the heks. Therefore they were 
turned back into a barren and desolate wilderness, in 
which they must wander many years, suffering contin- 
ual hardship and sorrow, until as a people, they should 
learn by bitter experience that the wisdom and love 
of God was a better guide for them than their own 
shortsighted prudence, or their own faithlessness and 
fears. 

This is an historical event which occurred as it is 
described. But it is not barren. It is pregnant. 
It is full of divine significance. It sets forth as in a 
living picture the universal truth, that, whensoever 
the people of God, discouraged by any obstacle that 
may arise to withstand them, refuse to go forward in 
implicit trust upon his guidance and strength, to pos- 
sess that heavenly rest and peace of true holiness of 
which they are the heirs, and of which the promised 
land was but the type and symbol, they must be 
turned back from that which is their true life to wan- 
der in a spiritual wilderness, where, though not for- 
saken, they are deprived of their most spiritual joys, 
and where, though they make no progress, they can 
never rest. Out of this wilderness they cannot come, 
until wearied with the toils and cares of earth, and 
chastised by human disappointments and sorrows, 
they are made willing to trust themselves to the 
guidance and the strength of God, and to follow him 
in spirit and in truth. 

Also the flood by which the old world was de- 
stroyed, and upon which Noah was saved, is declared 
by St. Peter to be the antitype of Christian baptism ; 
that is to say, it is a symbol of those truths pertain- 



WORD OF GOD. 19 

ing to the defilement and regeneration of man which 
were afterwards set forth under this sacrament. 
And by inspection we shall see that when these 
truths are studied as, according to this Apostle, they 
are exhibited in this tremendous symbol, it is not so 
easy to lose the force of the words in which regene- 
ration is described in the New Testament, as other- 
wise it is. In it we behold set forth in life, with 
terrific power, that judgment upon the old man, the 
corrupt nature in each individual which is described 
in the New Testament, by the words, a baptism of 
fire, being crucified with Christ, and by other expres- 
sions no less significant. 

For in this baptism of the Holy Ghost by which the 
soul is regenerated and which is symbolized by the 
flood, the carnal wisdom, the proud will, the self-trust 
of the natural man, are overwhelmed and destroyed 
by the judgment of God executed upon him, as the 
old world, with its race of giants, with all their arts 
and sciences, their cities and towers and high hills 
of refuge, was overwhelmed and submerged in the 
floods of the wrath of God. The filth and pollution 
of the spirit are cleansed away, as now the human 
race was purified. As Noah, the type of the rege- 
nerated soul, is saved in the ark because he believed 
God, so does the soul regenerated, stripped of all its 
filthy righteousness, and emptied of its self-trust, of all 
confidence in that in which the natural man trusts, 
by faith in Christ flee into him, where it finds salva- 
tion. By faith the new man rises above the floods of 
the judgment of God, by which the old man in him 
is cast down and destroyed. He is baptized into 



20 OP THE SYMBOLS OF THE 

death, unto sin, and the world ; and rises to newness 
of life unto God. But when his human hopes and 
joys begin to return, and he goes forth to the duties 
of the mortal life, his first care is to erect in his soul 
an altar to God, and to offer clean sacrifices, as now 
the patriarch builded an altar and offered sacrifices 
of every clean beast unto God. These offerings are 
now well pleasing to God, as Jehovah smelled a sweet 
savor from the sacrifice of Noah, Now for the first 
time a covenant is made with the new man in Christ, 
as here for the first time since the fall, a covenant 
was made with the newly baptized human race, in 
the person of Noah. Now the Father gives him a 
new law, the royal law of love, unknown to him be- 
fore, as here he gave to the race of man a new law. 
Now he gives him the earnest of the Spirit, the 
pledge of his love and guidance and protection, so 
that he need be afraid no more of judgment, as here 
he gave to the patriarch, and through him to his pos- 
terity, the assurance that he would no more destroy 
the earth with a flood, and placed his bow in the 
clouds to be a constantly returning pledge of his 
faithfulness. Henceforth, in the midst of the cloud 
and the storm, the new man beholds the dear pledge 
of God's covenanted mercy, which throws over his life 
a divine halo, of which the hues of the rainbow are 
but a shadow. 

These are but skeletons of the truths set forth in 
these holy symbols. Indeed, because the truth sym- 
bolized has a richness and power above all other modes 
of expression, every attempt to empty such symbols as 
these does not weaken and degrade them. Their 



WORD OF GOD. 21 

power is to be felt by gazing upon them rather than 
by reasoning about them. For they embody the 
truth of God, in the gospel of his dear Son, in mi- 
nuteness of detail, upon a stupendous scheme, with 
awful grandeur, in divine beauty, in the life of man, 
with the power of Jehovah. Mere enunciations in 
words can never attain to the Ufe and power of such 
symbols as these. 

When the significancy of these events which hap- 
pened unto them in order to he types unto us, is per- 
ceived, then and not before, does the Old Testament 
become the word of God to us with power. Most 
amazing, most divine does it become in our eyes and 
in our faith. It is recognised as another body for 
that Eternal Word, who also tabernacled in the man 
Jesus of Nazareth. It is radiant of the brightest 
beams of the Spirit of God. It is the very shrine of 
the living God, from which he continually gives 
oracles of life to our souls. It is the mercy-seat be- 
tween the cherubim from w^hich his glory beams with 
such spiritual power that it must be approached with 
the sprinkling of the blood of Christ, in a cloud of 
the incense of prayer, with the offering of an humble 
and sincere heart. 



22 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT OF THE 



CHAPTER III. 

OF THE SYMBOLICAL CHARACTER OF THE SCRIPTURAL 
ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN, 

From the foregoing views it is plain that the Word 
of God is not given to or for the men of any particu- 
lar age or country in an exclusive sense. It is the 
revelation of God to man. It was given through a 
chosen and peculiar people, for humanity. It de- 
scribes the origin, nature, and destination of huma- 
nity ; the creation, temptation, sin, redemption, and 
final salvation ^ of humanity. 

If it be asked what humanity is different from an 
idea in the mind of all individual human beings taken 
collectively, it may be found much easier to ask such 
questions than to answer them. For what is a vine 
or a tree, different from a collection of all the branch- 
es and other parts of which it is composed ? What 
is a man different from a collection of limbs, mind, 
soul, and of whatever else he is constituted ? Nay, 
with all reverence, what is the Deity, other than an 

* This is not to be understood in any sense opposed to the doc- 
trine of the everlasting perdition of the wicked. In the Scrip- 
tures the human race is regarded as a tree, of which individual 
branches may drop off and die ; but the tree shall live. Humanity 
shall be saved. The knoiol edge of the Lord shall cover the earth. 



CREATION AND FALL OF MAN. 23 

idea in the mind of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
taken collectively ? He who can have no perception 
nor feeling of this unity in the human race ; who can 
conceive of humanity in no other light than as a col- 
lection of individuals related to each other by proxi- 
mity of time, or space, or otherwise, but having no 
fundamental unity, no vital oneness — he who is sure 
that such a thing is altogether impossible — how can 
he receive the doctrine of a Trinity in Unity? 
Whether he avow it in words or not, though he may 
not be conscious of it, yet in his heart and practically, 
he must deny either the Trinity or the Unity of God. 
He must either reject the doctrine of a threefold 
mode of subsistence in the Deity, or he must worship 
three Gods. He cannot conceive of trinity nor mul- 
tiplicity in unity, although this very thing is contained 
in every fact of life. He may attain to the highest 
and most comprehensive formulas of physical and 
logical science, but he can have no profound recog- 
nition or feeling of the mysteries of life. For him, 
such expressions as ye are crucified with Christ, If 
one died for all, then were all dead, In Adam all die, 
By one man's disobedience many were made sinners 
— these, and all kindred expressions in the Scriptures 
which pertain to the first and second Adam, must be 
wholly unintelligible. 

In virtue of this unity in the human race it is that 
many of those events which are recorded of the first 
man are also found to be, in the substance of them, 
facts in the life of every man. He was the head and 
representative of all who are descended from him 



24 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT OF THE\ 

not only in a formal and legal, but also in a vital 
sense. He acts, and is spoken of, in the character of 
man.* Hence it is not exclusively his creation and 
temptation and sin and shame and toil and sorrow 
and death, v^hich are treated of in the first chapters of 
the Bible ; but in them is given an account of these 
things in respect to man as such. In other w^ords 
the events which they describe are both historical 
facts and symbols of truth which has a universal ap- 
plication. 

For to deny to this account the character of a faith- 
ful and true history of facts and events which actu- 
ally occurred as they are narrated and described ; 
to regard it as nothing but an artistically wrought 
myth or allegory or symbol is to take away from it 
the character which is always ascribed to it in the 
Word of God, and especially in the New Testament. 
In Adam all die, By one man^s offence judgment 
came upon all men — such expressions as these, of 
which there are great numbers, become wholly 
meaningless and absurd if Adam be regarded not as 
a real person, but simply as a mythical character. 
Also to maintain this view a, principle of interpreta- 
tion must be assumed which has not the least founda- 
tion or support, and which, if carried out and applied 
to other parts of the Word of God, and especially to 
the history of our Lord, as it has been done, must 

* " There is scarcely one word that we have an account of, which 
God ever said to Adam or Eve, but what does manifestly include 
their posterity in the meaning and design of it." — Edwards on Ori- 
ginal Sin. (See the whole passage.) Part ii., Chap, i., Sec. iii. 



CREATION AND FALL OF MAN. 25 

subvert all faith in Revelation, and end in the denial of 
the very existence of him whose hlood cleanseth us 
from all sin,^ 

No less does the denial of all symbolical signifi- 
cance to the events here recorded take avv^ay from 
them that character w^hich is ascribed to them in 
the Nev^ Testament. For if this account were in- 
tended to be understood as nothing but a literal 
history of events in the life of the first man Adam, 
how could truths be drawn from it of universal ap- 
plication? For example, St. Paul argues from the 
fact that the first woman was taken out of her hus- 
band, and made for him, that woman as such, is to 
be in subjection to her husband. But this reasoning 
has not the least logical force except upon the suppo- 
sition that they to whom he wrote knew that this 



* It would hardly be necessary to say one word in opposition to 
this view if it had not been advocated by one such mind as that 
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He cannot away w4th the " talking 
snake ;" and, therefore, denies that this account is to be understood 
literally. In his eyes it is nothing but a "sacred myth" The 
words of St. Peter himself: "The dumb ass, speaking with man's 
voice, forbade the madness of the prophet," must also have ap- 
peared to him as highly mythical. 

Of the vagaries of Swedenborg upon this portion of the Sacred 
History, it is scarcely possible to speak with gravity. Accord- 
ing to him, Adam is wholly a mythical character under which the 
man of the first ages is described. Eve also is not a person, but 
evil personified. Adam's union with her is man's union with sin. 
That is to say, God made sin out of man, and brought sin to him, 
and said, therefore shall a man forsake father and mother and shall 
cleave unto sin. When such views do not refute themselves they 
may safely defy all attacks from reason. 
2 



26 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT OF THE 

manner of the creation of the woman was a symbol. 
For otherwise, the fact that Eve was taken out of 
Adam might be a very good reason why she should 
obey him, but how could it prove that other women, 
who are not taken out of their husbands in a literal 
sense, should be subject to them? The same fact 
in the manner of the creation of the first woman is 
referred to, both in the Old and New Testament, as 
a reason why the man of every age and country 
should leave father and mother, and cleave to his 
wife. Here again, because Eve was taken out of 
Adam, was bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh, 
might be a good reason why he should break all 
other ties and cleave to her, but can be no reason 
why the man of these days should do the same, 
unless it be understood that this is a symbol under 
which is set forth truth of universal application. 
Also in the prophets and by the Lord divorces are 
forbidden for the reason that Adam and Eve were 
created male and female of one flesh. This might 
be a good reason why he should not divorce her, 
but the universal truth that other men are bound by 
the same law cannot be drawn from that fact other- 
wise than by regarding it as a symbol appointed by 
God to declare his will and intention in respect to 
marriage. 

But upon the supposition that the significancy of 
this history is to be confined to the first man, it gives 
us no account of the Creator nor of the creation of 
man, but only of one man. It says nothing about 
the sin and fall of man, but only of one man. It 



CREATION AND FALL OF MAN. 27 

gives no account of the origin of the shame of the 
naked body in us. It neither explains nor alludes 
to the curse of toil and sorrow and death, as these 
things have come upon us. It does not indicate any 
connexion between the curse of child-bearing as 
pronounced upon Eve, and the same curse which 
has come upon woman as such. Upon the supposi- 
tion that these events are not symbols, it was the 
snake which tempted the first woman, and not Satan 
under its form, embodied in it ; the enmity between 
man and the serpent teaches us nothing about the 
enmity between Christ and the adversary ; neither 
do the words. He shall bruise thy head^ and thou 
shalt bruise his heel^ contain any promise of the 
destruction of the power of Satan by the Son of 
God. This curse is all fulfilled, in its literal import, 
by the enmity and warfare between man and the 
reptile itself. That which Christians in every age 
and country have treasured in their hearts' faith as 
a most blessed promise is all exploded. 

From many parts of the narrative itself, however, 
it is perfectly evident that it treats of symbols. The 
country in which the garden of innocence was situat- 
ed, is called the land of Eden, that is to say, the land 
of Delight. But when we use such expressions as 
The castle of indolence, The palace of desire, are they 
not always understood as symbols? The tree of 
liberty — is it not a symbol under which something is 
set forth pertaining to liberty ? The tree of life, The 
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, — these, if 
language be not used at random, must be symbols 



28 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT OF THE 

under which something is set forth pertaining to Hfe, 
and to the knowledge of good and evil. 

But if all other proofs were wanting, the universal- 
ity of the facts which are treated of would be suffi- 
cient of itself to show that what is signified by this 
account is not intended to be confined to the first man 
and woman. The temptation of man by the devil ; 
the sin of man against God ; the shame of his naked 
body ; the curse of child-bearing upon the woman ; 
that of toil and sorrow, and death, upon humanity — 
these, being found co-extensive with the human race, 
are enough to show that this part of the Word of 
God, except where this is limited by the account 
itself, and by the very nature of symbols, is given to 
describe humanity, man as such, no less than to record 
facts and events in the life of the first man, Adam. 

Nor has the particular and universal significancy 
and application of the truth here set forth been over- 
looked by those who have translated the Scriptures 
into other languages, and especially into English. 
They have marked it in the only way in which it 
could be marked in a translation. For the Hebrew 
word Adam, the same through the whole narrative, 
they have rendered in two ways ; sometimes by the 
word Man, denoting man as such, which is its exact 
equivalent in meaning ; and sometimes by simply 
transferring the word itself from one language to the 
other, as a proper name of the first man, Adam. 
This they have done evidently because they discerned 
that, as used in the account, it is both a term of uni- 



CREATION AND FALL OF MAN. 29 

versal significancy, and at the same time a proper 
name. 

This will the more fully appear as we proceed to 
empty these divinely appointed and inexhaustible 
symbols of some portion of their meaning. 



30 OF THE CREATION OF MAN. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF THE CREATION OF MAN. 
" God created man." 

As we have seen, the translators of the Bible into 
English have indicated that the significancy of this 
declaration is not to be confined to the first man. 
He is taken as the type and symbol of the race. All 
his posterity are included in him ; and what is said 
of him is intended to apply to them. Therefore, 
these words declare that God creates every man by 
his direct agency as truly as he did Adam. The 
methods by which he does this may be modified 
indeed, as they are, but the substance of what is 
expressed in these words is just as true of one man 
as of another, of all men as of the first man. 

In order that we should perceive the truth of this, 
and feel its force, we must consider an objection or 
difiiculty which now continually arises in the minds 
of men under this form. It is true, doubtless, that 
the first man was made by the hand of God ; but now, 
men are made by the laws of the natural world. 
Nature, it is true, was originally made by God. He 
communicated to her all her powers. But now men 
are made by the laws of nature. God ceased from 
his work of creation after the sixth day. 

This conception of nature as a great machine hav- 



OF THE CREATION OF MAN. 31 

ing its powers within itself, which God created a great 
while ago, and whose operations he now stands by 
to watch and direct, as an engineer superintends the 
machinery of a factory, has well nigh succeeded, in 
our time, in banishing the Creator from his own 
works. For if his machine be perfect, as it must be 
since it is the work of perfect wisdom and unlimited 
power, there seems to be no need of his presence 
even as an engineer. Under this view the very near, 
ever present God of the Scriptures, becomes almost 
of necessity nothing better than the deity of the 
ancient Epicureans, withdrawn into some remote 
corner of the universe, too far off to concern himself 
with the affairs of the insects who inhabit this earth 
— a god of eternal idleness. Such a conception of 
God has no power whatever over the life of man. 
It leaves him free to follow the desires of his own 
heart. It gives him for his chief good nothing higher 
than pleasure, and for his eternal hope, nothing better 
than the grave. 

In opposition to this, the God of the Scriptures is 
always represented as present, and as doing by his 
direct power, all those things which are called the 
works of nature. The word of God knows nothing 
of nature as a system of powers. We, in these days, 
have departed from its phraseology upon this subject, 
and from the idea which it reveals of the agency of 
God in the natural world. For example, where we 
say, the lightnings it thundered, it rains, the icind 
blows, it ceases to blow, in the Scriptures it is the fire 
of God, God thundered in the heaven, He raiseth the 
stormy wind, He maketh the storm a calm, He sendeth 



33 OF THE CREATION OF MAN. 

the springs into the valleys^ He watereth the hills 
from his chambers, Thou makest darkness, I create the 
light. He is represented as feeding the young lions 
when they roar for food, and the young ravens when 
they cry to him. These wait all upon thee, that thou 
mayest give them their meat in due season. What 
thou givest them they gather. Thou openest thine 
hand — they are filled with good. Thou takest away 
their breath — they die and return to their dust. 
Thou sendest forth thy spirit — they are created. 
Thou renewest the face of the earth. 

The heartfelt recognition of this truth as it is in Je- 
sus, that not a sparrow can fall to the ground without 
the heavenly Father, is the only conception of God 
which can have power over the life of man. Every 
other view which removes him further off from us, 
and his agency further back than does his own word, 
is a delusion of the mind of man, professing itself to 
be wise and thereby becoming a fool. It leads di- 
rectly into scepticism, and when carried out, ends in 
godless infidelity. 

But do not the physical sciences demonstrate that 
there are powers in nature which are not the direct 
agency of God ? 

In order to answer this question we must carefully 
distinguish between two things which are totally dif- 
ferent, between a law and ^ power. This distinction 
is often lost sight of in these days when the whole 
force of the human mind seems to be bent upon the 
objects of natural science. Now, as every true vo- 
tary of this science knows, its legitimate object is 
simply to determine what are facts, and according to 



OF THE CREATION OF MAN. 33 

what laws or methods these facts are produced. It 
has nothing at all to do with the power by which they 
are caused to exist. But in the heat and enthusiasm 
of this pursuit after the knowledge of facts, and of 
the laws or methods according to which the things 
which do appear are created, man loses out of mind 
the invisible power which creates them. Thus he 
has come to deify laws and methods under the word 
Nature, regarding and speaking of nature as if it 
were a system of powers. 

Disguise it as we will, this is the idolatry of our 
time, and of modern civilization. For this we have 
forsaken the living, ever-present, ever-active God of 
the Scriptures. It is an idolatry far more subtle and 
disguised, therefore perhaps, more destructive to the 
soul of man than that of the ancient Scandinavians, 
or Greeks, or any other primitive heathen people. 
For they never did lose the knowledge of the truth 
that there is in nature nothing that can be properly 
called powers. They knew that, having determined 
with perfect accuracy the laws or methods accord- 
ing to which things in the natural world are done, 
they had determined nothing in respect to the power 
which does them. They understood that within all 
the laws and methods of nature was present a living 
power, and one truly divine, although they did not 
know that this power was in every case one and the 
same. Hence arose their gods of cold and heat, of 
thunder and storm, of the heavens, earth and ocean, 
of the seasons, rivers and trees. 

The laws of nature, when conceived of as they are 
2* 



34 OF THE CREATION OF MAN. 

exhibited by a right natural science, are not powers in 
any sense. They are simply methods according to 
which some power acts. A law cannot execute itself. 
It demands an executive power to act according to 
it — to fulfil it. A law without this power within it, 
is a dead letter, a mere idea in the mind, a form with- 
out any substance, an abstraction. It is not worth 
while to attempt to prove this. It must be seen to 
be true, or argument will have but little weight. It 
may be well, however, to cite the name and authority 
of Newton. His life, as all know, was spent in de- 
termining the laws of nature — of the universe. In 
this work his success was greater and more splendid 
than that of any other man who ever turned his mind 
to the subject. It might seem to be gratuitous, and 
even out of place, to say this here, except for the 
sake of recalling all that is suggested of his labors 
by the one word, gravitation. For he did not con- 
ceive of the universe as a great machine whose 
power of motion was the law of gravitation in itself, 
which God had formerly created, and now stood by 
to superintend its movements. Therefore, after he 
had determined that the earth and the heavenly 
bodies, and indeed all things, were in fact moved 
according to this law or method, he still acknow- 
ledged that there was needed a power thus to move 
the universe from day to day and from age to age. 
What this power was, he did not even attempt scien- 
tifically to determine, because he well knew that this 
question must lead him entirely beyond the limits of 
the legitimate sphere of natural science. He sup- 



OF THE CREATION OF MAN. 35 

plied this power, indeed, yet only and avowedly by 
way of conjecture, by some subtle and impalpable 
ether which he supposed might perhaps be univer- 
sally diffused through infinite space. But by this 
conjecture he only threw the question of the moving 
power which acts according to the law of gravitation, 
one step further back : he did not solve it, as is evi- 
dent, and as all men of science now admit. For it 
immediately recurs again in this form, What moves 
the ether, by which the planets are moved ? 

The answer to this question in whatsoever form it 
may occur, is wholly without the sphere of natural 
science. It belongs to theology. Therefore it is 
answered by God himself in his own word. In it, as 
we have seen, the Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Allwise 
Jehovah, the Hving God, is revealed as always and 
everywhere the one power whose methods of action, 
which he voluntarily chooses for himself, and which 
in miracles he changes at pleasure, we call the laws 
of nature. He is the working power throughout the 
universe. The methods of action which he has 
chosen and still chooses for himself, we call, doubt- 
less with the greatest propriety, the laws of gravita- 
tion, chemical attraction and repulsion, capillary at- 
traction, and by other like names. The error lies 
not in names, but in losing sight of the power which 
works according to these methods. Wherever any- 
thing is done according to these methods, there is 
Jehovah doing it. Natural science, strictly so called, 
has nothing opposed to this doctrine of God's revela- 
tion to man. It is only when the object and the 



S6 OP THE CREATION OP MAN* 

spher6 of this science is entirely misunderstood, as 
Newton did not misunderstand it, that it is supposed 
to demonstrate anything contrary to that view of his 
own agency which God has given in his word. 

Now, therefore, as truly as of old, it is Jehovah, the 
living God, not the ordo ordinans of the Pantheist, 
who creates the light and divides it from the dark- 
ness. Now He gathers the waters together into one 
place, and causes the dry land to appear, as truly and 
directly as of old. Now He causes the grass and herb 
and tree to grow out of the ground. He sprouts the 
germ buried in the heart of the earth. He turns it 
upwards to the light and heat, rather than down- 
wards into the cold and dark. He draws the juices 
of the earth up through the capillary tubes. With 
these He nourishes and strengthens the tender plant. 
He stretches out the branches, puts forth the leaves, 
and opens the buds to his genial light and warmth 
in the rays of the sun. He blooms the flower, and 
paitits it with its various and beautiful colors. He 
elaborates the fruit, and ripens it for the food of man. 
He rains upon the dry and parched earth. He causes 
the streams to flow down the hills into the valleys ; 
with these He fertilizes the ground. He is the mov- 
ing power in the wind and the storm. He stirs up 
and troubles the ocean. His wrath is the wrath of 
the angry deep. He maketh the storm a calm so that 
the waves thereof he stilL His light is the light of 
the sun, moon, and stars. He moves the planets in 
their vast elliptical orbits around their focal suns. 
From the centre to the circumference, He is present 



OF THE CREATION OF 3IA1V* 37 

doing all things that are done in nature by those 
methods which he chooses, and which we call the 
laws of the universe. This he does by his own 
free, voluntary choice and power as truly and di- 
rectly as upon the first day of the creation. Nature 
of itself is but a system of methods, a dead organ- 
ism. But within, under, behind (or howsoever it 
may be feebly expressed) the laws, methods or pro- 
cesses of nature, is the Spirit, the living God, who 
upholds and moves all things, as they are upheld and 
moved, by the Omnipotent Word of his power. 

But did not God cease from his work of creation 
after the sixth day ? 

Certainly he ceased from creating new forms, but 
he did not cease from creating others of species and 
kind the same that he had already formed. Since 
then nothing new has been discovered by the furthest 
extended observations of natural science, except in 
the case of miracles. But did he cease from cre- 
ating according to the methods, and for the objects, 
described in the account of these six days ? By no 
means. Thou sendest forth thy spirit — they are 
created. My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. 

Therefore, in the words of St. Paul, The invisible 
things of Him from the creation of the world are 
clearly seen, being understood from the things which 
are made, even his eternal power and Godhead. The 
emphasis is to be laid upon the expression are made 
or done, revealing the truth that we are surrounded 
by the present, direct agency of God Almighty. In 
the thunder, in the roar of the storm, the cataract, 



38 OF THE CREATION OF MAN. 

and the troubled ocean, his voice is to be heard as 
truly as it was from Mount Sinai. In the move- 
ments of the planetary spheres, in the blooming and 
clothing of the flower, in the falling of a sparrow 
to the ground, his direct agency and power is to be 
seen as truly as in the raising of Lazarus from the 
dead. And in the creation of the child born of 
human parents, his hand is revealed as truly as in 
the creation of Adam from the dust of the ground. 
Therefore said our first mother when her eldest son 
was born, / have gotten a man from the Lord. 
Therefore is the child of Christian parents, when 
asked the question, who created you^ taught to an- 
swer, God. 

For, although the method according to which the 
thing is done, is modified by the new conditions 
which are introduced in the relation of the child to 
its human parents, yet God is the working power in 
the creation of man now as of old. He creates the 
first elements of the body. He draws up the parti- 
cles of the dust of the ground, and builds up the 
embrion by his power now as of old. He forms the 
brain, heart, nerves, arteries, veins, blood, bones and 
flesh, now by his own chosen methods. With the 
dust of the ground drawn up by his own power, 
and prepared in his own laboratories. He nourishes 
and strengthens his creature. He brings the child 
forth into the world and breathes into its nostrils 
the breath of life, so that it becomes a living soul. 
He works the bellows of the lungs, and the hydrau- 
lic organism of the heart, arteries and veins, with his 



OF THE CREATION OF MAN, 39 

own hand. He compounds in the bosom of the 
mother the nourishment which she gives to her in- 
fant. He distributes it through the body where it is 
needed. God creates every man as truly as he 
created Adam. God made me is the only truth 
which can produce in the heart of man the feeling 
that he belongs wholly to his creator, and has no 
right to appropriate to himself the property of 
another. 



40 OF THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 



CHAPTER V. 

OF THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 

** Jehovah God formed man." 

*^ God created man in his own image ; in the image of God created 
he him." 

Here also, as before, it is man as such who is spoken 
of under the type and symbol, the representative of 
the whole race of Adam. The application of the 
truth which is set forth in these words is indeed in 
part limited by events that follow, and by the nature 
of symbols ; yet it is true that man as such is made 
in the image of God. That these words do, in some 
sense, apply to all men, is evident from the Scrip- 
ture. For in the law given to Noah after the flood, 
the reason why the life of the murderer should pay 
for the life he had taken is that man was made in 
the image of God. This reason, as is evident at a 
glance, has no force except upon the supposition 
that the murdered man, whoever he might be, was 
made in that image or likeness. Also St. James de- 
clares in speaking of the evil of the unbridled 
tongue. Therewith bless we God even the father ; 
and therewith curse we men which are made after the 
similitude of God. Here it is given in express 
words that not Adam alone formerly, but men now 



OF THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 41 

are made in the image of God. Nor is this truth 
declared less expHcitly in many other parts of the 
Scriptures. 

The repetition under different forms of the truth 
expressed in these words, is emphatical, and marks 
its importance. We must therefore proceed to in- 
quire what this image or hkeness of God in man is 
now, and what it was in the first man. 

It is to be observed, as universally true, that the 
names by which man designates the attributes of 
God, are originally names of attributes and faculties 
and qualities which he finds in himself. This fact 
that we apply to God the same terms by which we 
describe things in ourselves, proves that we have dis- 
cerned in ourselves the likeness or image of God. 
For we do not call by the same names things which 
we conceive of as totally unlike. Indeed, we are 
not able to conceive of anything in God the likeness 
of which we do not find in ourselves. Whatever 
there may be in him, which has no reflection or 
similitude whatever in man, is wholly unknown to us. 
It is only by the knowledge of this truth that the 
force of St. John's reasoning can be felt, where he 
says. We know that we shall he like him ; for we 
shall see him as he is. Here he gives the fact that 
we shall see God as he is, as a certain proof that we 
shall be like him. But if it were possible to see 
God as he is without being like him, this reasoning 
could have no force. For example, we ascribe 
knowledge to God. But it would be impossible for 
us to do this, if knowledge to some degree were 



42 OF THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 

not in ourselves. For we could not know any- 
thing, much less that what we describe by this word 
is an attribute of God. So also we understand that 
God is a Being ; but it would be impossible for us 
to know this if we had no being ourselves. We 
say that God is blessed ; but we could have no idea 
of blessedness unless we had enjoyed it to some de- 
gree in ourselves. We could not say that God is 
just, with any intelligence of what is meant by that, 
if there were not in us at least a similitude of justice. 
It is unnecessary to go into these illustrations in 
detail. But if the subject be examined with atten- 
tion it will be found that we cannot have the least 
conception of anything in God the likeness or simi- 
litude of which we do not find in ourselves. But 
this is to acknowledge that there is in man an 
image of God. 

In order the better to understand the nature and 
dependence of the image of God in man, we may 
consider the likeness of himself which is reflected 
when a man looks into a mirror. For everything 
which he beholds in this likeness is the reflection of 
some trait in his own person. The one is wholly 
dependent upon the other. While he gazes it exists. 
As he moves it moves. When he turns away it 
perishes as if it had never been. And the person of 
the man is a being wholly transcendent in his nature 
and attributes above the image which is reflected. 

In like manner, everything in man which has not 
been introduced by sin (which is the reflected image 
not of God, but of another), is the likeness or simili- 



OF THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 43 

tude of something in his Creator. The attributes of 
the infinite God reflected in a finite nature, as in a 
mirror, become so to speak, the attributes of man. 
The very being of man is the finite reflection of the 
Being of God. So it is with all faculties and quali- 
ties, sin only and its consequences excepted, which 
we find in ourselves. Our thought, knowledge, voli- 
tion, power, and will, are all the similitudes reflected 
in our finite nature of his infinite and transcendent 
attributes which we, because we discern this like- 
ness, feebly attempt to describe by the same names. 
Even his Omnipresence finds itself feebly reflected 
in our limited presence, as does his omnipotence in 
our finite power. 

But especially is it to be observed and borne in 
mind in order to the right understanding of the nature 
of the sin and fall of man, that the moral and spiritual 
in him is the reflection of that in God which we call 
by the same name. This by eminence is the image 
of God in man by which he is distinguished above 
the brute, and which has been so shockingly defaced 
by sin. Justice, holiness, goodness, and truth — these 
have no existence on earth, except as they are 
reflected in us, as in a mirror, by that in God which 
is their eternal substance. The conscience itself 
marking the distinction between right and wrong, as 
a guide of practical choice between good and evil, 
is but a reflection in us of the eternal diflference and 
opposition between what is agreeable with, and what 
is opposed to, the nature of God. 

No less is everything in man which is the reflec- 



44 OF THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 

tion of anything in God, wholly and continually 
dependent upon him, than is the reflection in a mirror 
wholly and continually dependent upon its substance. 
The most substantial spiritual being of man is a 
dependent reflection of the One Being, the One sub- 
stance, the One Spirit, God : that is to say, it is 
sustained in existence by the pervading presence and 
ever-active agency of God, who upholdeth all things 
hy the Word of his 'power ^ as really and truly as the 
image in a glass is sustained in existence by the pre- 
sence and gaze of the person who is reflected. If 
God should cease to gaze into the mirror of time, in 
which he reflects himself, the race of man, together 
with the whole creation, would instantly cease to be, 
as the figures vanish from the mirrors when the com- 
pany retires from the thronged hall. Man is not 
even capable of evil except as he is upheld and sus- 
tained in existence by the unceasing action of the 
power of his Creator. 

Also, that in God of which man is the reflection or 
image infinitely transcends all that appears in man, 
as the living person in his nature and attributes 
transcends his likeness in a glass. This is one of the 
truths which are expressed by that great and terrible 
name, so sacred that the pious Jew never dared to 
utter it, Jehovah. The meaning of this word as 
given by God himself is, I am that which I am. I 
am inscrutable, incomprehensible to you. None hath 
ever withdrawn my veil. No man hath seen God at 
any time. God is above every idea or conception 
which we can form or have of him. The highest and 



OF THE IMAGE OP GOD IN MAN. 45 

purest and most comprehensive ideas which we can 
attach to the words being, justice, hohness, know- 
ledge, power, truth, goodness, love, mercy, and the 
Hke, can but point upwards to that in God which we 
call by these names. They cannot describe God. 
That in him towards which these ideas in us point 
upwards, remains ever transcendent above all that 
we can conceive. When we have ascribed to him 
all possible perfections, in the highest degree con- 
ceivable by us, still God is not just that which we 
have imagined but transcendently above it. There- 
fore, with reason, is man forbidden to make unto 
himself any image or similitude of the Eternal. 
Every conceivable image or representation of God, 
can do nothing but degrade him. For every creature 
that God has made he is eternally Jehovah, I am that 
which I am ; unto whom no forms, no words, no 
images, no ideas can possibly attain. 

If now we conceive of this likeness or image of 
God in man as perfect and exact, not distorted like the 
reflection cast from a broken or distorted mirror, yet 
still, after the manner of the infinite in the finite, we 
shall have perhaps the best idea which is possible of 
the image of God in the first man. It was reflected 
in him as the starry heavens in the pure and serene 
lake, when it is unruffled by a breath of air, and un- 
defiled by the swollen mountain streams. And his 
perfection was maintained by recognising himself as 
a reflection, and but a reflection of God. The mo- 
ment he should aspire to independence of choice, 
agency and life, he must sin, err, and fall. This 



46 OF THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 

would introduce a violation of all law and order 
into the spiritual world as great, inexplicable, and 
terrible as would be manifested in nature if the 
reflection in a glass should assume an independent 
life and action, and begin to mock and caricature the 
features and actions of the person from whom it is 
reflected. Iniquity is, and must be, a mystery. Thus 
defaced and distorted is now the likeness of God in 
man. 

The image of God thus reflected in the finite 
nature of man, was again reflected and symbolized 
in his outward and material form. His upright posi- 
tion became the symbol and expression of his inte- 
grity, justice — of his internal uprightness. Hence 
the word upright comes to signify justice in man. 
Thus to stand signifies to be innocent and just ; to 
fall is to sin. The freedom of his movement in every 
direction, his unfettered arms and hands, as con- 
trasted with the confined limbs of the brute, reflected 
the freedom of his will and choice. Hence we speak 
of the/ree(iom of the will. His clear and lofty eye 
became the symbol of his intelligence. Hence, to see 
passes over into a more spiritual sense and means 
also to know. And so it is with other things. For, 
that the nature of man is in some sort reflected in his 
outward feature and form has been always perceived, 
and is evident indeed from the effect which is pro- 
duced upon us by the supposition of this nature resi- 
dent in the form of a brute, or of £l purely brute 
nature in the form of a man. We are instantly 
shocked and revolted. In the one case, we feel that 



OF THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 47 

the form would be a prison for the nature, not a 
home ; in the other, the creature would be a monster 
and chained or destroyed. This was seen and ex- 
pressed by the heathen poet in ever memorable 
words. 

"Pronaque cum spectent animalia caetera terrain, 
Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri 
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera telle re vultus."* 

The full, constant, living feeling of the truth set 
forth in this account of the creation of man in the 
image of God, is the only effectual safeguard against 
anthropomorphism, which is the attempt to attain unto 
God by bringing him down to us. This delusion and 
sin is one of those to which the man of every age 
and country is most prone. It is scarcely less com- 
mon now among Christians than it was among the 
Greeks when Paul preached against it in Athens, 
though doubtless in a greatly softened form. To 
warn us against it God gives us his great and terrible 
name Jehovah, to teach us that all the image of him 
there can be in us is but an imago, a reflection, which 
must be infinitely transcended by its substance in 
him. For this purpose he declares. My thoughts 
are not as your thoughts, nor my ways as your ways. 



** While in their form and in their nature prone. 
All other creatures downwards look to earth, 
Feature and form sublime to man He gave 
And bade him gaze with steady eye to heaven." 

Ovid L, Met. II. 



48 OF THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 

But high as the heavens are above the earth, so high 
are my thoughts above your thoughts, and my ways 
above your ways. We are constantly prone to con- 
ceive of God as altogether such an one as ourselves. 
Too often v^e forget that he is the incomprehensible 
one ; in all his modes of being and attributes, as far 
above the most sublime flight of our thoughts as the 
fixed stars are above the reach of a human arm ; 
transcending all our conceptions as the substance and 
person of a man transcends his likeness reflected in a 
mirror. Only this truth can guard us against the 
presumption, the folly, the madness of that which is 
one form of the sin of Adam, of attempting to scan 
his ways and his wisdom, and to justify them in our 
eyes. We cannot measure and judge of the Godlike 
power and Wisdom, the awful Justice and Holiness, 
the infinite Blessedness, the incomp^'ehensible Love 
and Mercy of Jehovah, by our ideas of these things 
— ideas which must be derived from the dependent, 
and now distorted, reflection in us, and not from the 
perfect and eternal substance in him. 

It is before Jehovah alone that we truly bow. 
Only in presence of the Incomprehensible are our 
minds subdued to faith. The Infinite only can we 
truly adore. Only by Truth, Holiness and Love 
transcending all our conceptions, can our hearts be 
brought back to that sincerity and solemnity which 
were revealed in Christ, and imbreathed with that 
divine all-hallowing love which is the peace that 
passeth all understanding, the joy of God unspeaka- 
ble and full of glory. 



OF THE TWOFOLD NATURE OF MAN. 49 



CHAPTER VI. 

OF THE TWO-FOLD NATURE OF MAN. 

** Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became wliving soul." 

It would require a book instead of a chapter to 
discuss the distinction which is marked in these 
words. It is that of all most fundamental, and neces- 
sary to a right understanding of the Scriptural view 
of man, and of his sin. Also it is one most liable to 
continual misapprehension. It is the distinction be- 
tween that in man which is of the earth earthy^ and 
that which is of the Lord from heaven. 

These two natures, an earthly or material, and a 
moral or spiritual, are in the unity of one person. 
The substance of the one is here said to be drawn 
from the dust of the ground ; the other is described 
as the breath of Jehovah. The confusion of these 
two natures, the mistaking of the functions and mani- 
festations of the one for those of the other, is abso- 
lutely fatal to a right view of the sin and fall of the 
human race. We must proceed therefore to consi- 
der the distinction between them. 

The leading characteristics of the earthly nature 

in man are easily marked, because, in common with 

him, they are found also in the brute, isolated from 
3 



50 OF THE TWOFOLD NATURE OF MAN. 

that which is moral and spiritual, and thus in a man- 
ner defined. Whatever we find in the animal crea- 
tion, we may know cannot be peculiar to that in 
man which is moral and spiritual. What we do not 
find in any degree in the brute, we may know is, in 
man, of a higher origin than this earth. 

In the brute, then, we have the material body and 
form, with the senses which are seated in it. To 
these belopg their corresponding appetites and de- 
sires, the pleasures of gratification and pains of pri- 
vation. In the brute nature, also, are found certain 
passions and aflfections, such as are necessary for its 
support, defence and propagation. The love between 
the male and the female, and the storg^, or aflfection 
of the parent for its oflfspring, are examples. 

At the head of this nature in the brute is a certain 
faculty of knowledge or sensual wisdom. This, in 
some animals, as in the dog, rises very high, and 
manifests itself in many things which, when observed 
in man, are often supposed to be the attributes of, 
and peculiar to, his spiritual nature. This is that con- 
fusion which proves so fatal to the right understand- 
ing of the Word of God. For by reason of the sin 
of man, and of the preternatural development of the 
earthly nature in him, and of the feebleness of the 
action of the spiritual, he has come to regard that 
which belongs to this earth, and is found in common 
wdth him in the brute, as of celestial origin. This 
sensual wisdom in animals is capable of the foresight 
of an object to be attained, and of a process of rea- 
soning by which it adapts means to the attainment of it. 



OF THE TWOFOLD NATURE OF MAN. 51 

That many brutes have the capacity of reasoning, at 
least in some degree, and of drawing logical conclu- 
sions in view of the end which they seek to accom- 
plish, is beyond all doubt. Examples of this will be 
given when we come to consider the subtlety of the 
serpent. But that which is of most importance to 
observe, is that this sensual wisdom in the brute, by 
whatever processes of reasoning it may reach its 
practical conclusions, is conversant only with the 
things which belong to this life, and which perish in 
the using. It gives all its practical judgments solely 
from the earthly point of view, for the gratification of 
the appetites, desires and affections of the animal, 
without any reference to right and wrong, to the un- 
seen and eternal world, or to God. Of these things 
the brute manifests not the least intelligence. 

In man, also, there is a brute nature, with all these 
characteristics. But especially is this same faculty 
of sensual wisdom which stands at its head to be 
noted. It manifests itself in him precisely as it does 
in the brute, only in a higher degree. It gives its 
practical judgments from the earthly point of view, 
for the gratification of the desires, appetites and af- 
fections of the earthly nature at whose head it stands. 
Its sphere is the mortal life. It reasons in view of 
earthly objects, thus adapting its means to its ends. 
It is the working power in the prosecution of merely 
human science. It looks not beyond the objects of 
sense. 

This sensual wisdom in man, the head of his earthly 
nature, in virtue of its union in him with a higher na- 



52 OF THE TWOFOLD NATURE OF MAN. 

ture, whose light is reflected upon it, is indeed greatly 
elevated and enlarged above all that appears in the 
brute. Hence have arisen its great conquests in the 
domain of the physical sciences. But hov^ever high it 
may rise, it can never become spiritual, nor attain to 
immortality. Its results can never be permanent and 
imperishable. What is to become of geology and 
mineralogy and chemistry, when the earth shall be 
no more ? What is to become of Astronomy when 
the heavens shall have waxed old as a garment and 
been folded up by the hand of the Eternal ? Where 
will be the purest forms of Geometry when time and 
space shall be no longer ? For with God there is no 
past or future, no far or near ; and he only sees all 
things as they truly are. The heathen themselves 
were not ignorant of this. Therefore Plato insisted 
upon the study of mathematics as an intermediate 
step in education to the knowledge of eternal things. 
He knew that this science was not in itself the know- 
ledge of the imperishable. This, and all beneath it, 
is that knowledge which shall vanish away. 

When a man falls wholly under the guidance of 
this wisdom, which is conversant only with the things 
that perish, he gives his practical judgments accord- 
ing to the appetites, desires and affections, from the 
earthly point of view, without reference to right and 
wrong, to the spiritual and unseen world, or to God, 
as truly as it is possible for the brute to do. He may 
reach his conclusions by means of a more compre- 
hensive induction of particulars, through longer, more 
complicated and more accurate processes of reason- 



OF THE TWOFOLD NATURE OF MAN. 53 

ing, therefore with a more intelligent and certain 
foresight, but the faculty and power by which he 
does all this, differs from that in the brute only in 
degree. It can never attain to the true knowledge of 
God and divine things. He who seeks to know God 
by means of it alone, must remain in blindness. 
Hence it is that the sciences of which it is the instru- 
ment are found flourishing in greatest vigor, and 
bearing their highest blossoms and fruit, side by side 
with the rankest infidelity and atheism. Never did 
this wisdom develope and unfold itself more power- 
fully, nor attain to greater perfection, than it did in 
the French philosophers of the last century. Never 
did it reason more logically from the only principles 
which it is capable of receiving than it did when it 
reached the conclusion, that there is no right and 
wrong but pleasure and pain, no spiritual and unseen 
world, no immortality, no God. These are the only 
results v^hich it is possible to attain by following that 
wisdom which is in its own nature and origin earthly^ 
and which, adopted as the supreme guide of life, and 
depended upon as the revelator of spiritual truth, be- 
comes devilish. This wisdom is the light of the 
earthly nature in man, as it is in the brute. It is to 
be held in perfect subjection to the spiritual in him ; 
and thus held, both in human and divine things, its 
operations are legitimate and most useful. But trans- 
ported into the domain of spiritual life as a criterion 
and law of absolute truth, it becomes a most perni- 
cious sophist. It can give only negative results, and 
these negatives are lies. There is no God. The 



54 OF THE TWOFOLD NATURE OF MAN. 

natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of 
God; for they are foolishness unto him ; neither can 
he know them because they are spiritually discerned. 
This is that knowledge which puffeth up ; so that 
carried away by it, man disdains the meekness and 
lowhness of mind and self-sacrifice and hohness of 
Christ. He discerns no beauty in these that he should 
desire them. This is the wisdom which, because he 
has fallen so completely under its guidance and con- 
trol, is called in Scripture the wisdom of man^ in op- 
position to the Wisdom of God, 

Such is the earthly nature of man with its wisdom. 
If there were nothing more of him than this, he 
would be but the first of brutes, as one animal is 
superior to another. 

But into this nature God breathed his own breath 
as the breath of its life, and man became a living 
soul. This describes his moral and spiritual nature. 
Its peculiar attributes are never found in the brute. 
It is true indeed that this higher nature contains in 
itself all the perfections of the lower. It is essen- 
tially intelligent and reasonable. But its grand 
characteristic is that it cannot be satisfied with the 
knowledge of visible and earthly and changing and 
perishable things. It pierces through all things that 
are seen and felt, through all the objects of the 
senses, after a cause which is not seen. It recog- 
nises within and behind all things that appear a 
substance which does not appear. It perceives the 
necessity that under all the changing and fleeting 
phenomena of the senses, there should be a cause 



OF THE TWOFOLD NATURE OF MAN. 55 

and substance in virtue of which they arise and 
exist and depart, but which is not subject to their 
imperfections, to their mutations, nor to their decay. 
That is to say, in this nature is the capacity of the 
knowledge of the unseen and spiritual world, of 
right and wrong, of immortality, of God. By it 
alone is the true God recognised as the living God, 
in opposition to that merely logical scheme of truth 
which is called God by Spinoza, and which can have 
no power over the heart and life of man. In it 
alone is the capacity of love to God, of joy in obey- 
ing and pleasing him, and of the enjoyment of his 
love. This it is which feels the consciousness of 
immortality, and recognises itself as a citizen of the 
eternal world. 

The things which the natural man, as he is now 
found, hates, which are foolishness to him, the spi- 
ritual man in his original state, loved. And as new 
created, raised from the dead under the gospel, he 
discerns in the meekness and lowliness of mind, 
and self-denial for the good of others, and holiness 
of Christ, a divine, overpowering beauty, a glory 
which fills him with unutterable love and desire to 
be like Christ. Instead of being foolishness to him, 
these things are seen and felt to be the highest wis- 
dom as the law of his own life and actions. The 
true transfiguration of the Word and Wisdom of 
God takes place in his heart, of which that upon 
Mount Tabor was but the feeble type and symbol. 
The knowledge of the power and glory of these 
things as they are revealed in Christ, is the know- 



56 OF THE TWOFOLD NATURE OF MAN. 

ledge of imperishable and eternal things. Compared 
with this all other knowledge is but an unsubstantial 
and fleeting shadow. Charity only never faileth. 

As at the head of the earthly nature in man stands 
this sensual wisdom which has been described, so at 
the head of his spiritual nature stands the con- 
science. This was intended to be a tablet in the 
heart bearing engraved upon itself the Wisdom of 
God as the law of man's life and actions. It may 
be compared to an eye, by which the path which the 
Wisdom of God traces out for his children is dis- 
cerned ; or to a window, through which the light of 
God, and of the eternal world, shines into the soul. 
And, better still perhaps, it is the ear through which 
the Voice, the Word of God is heard uttering his 
distinctions between good and evil, that man may 
know to choose and to refuse aright. 

For it is to be observed that the conscience 
claims for itself an absolute, supreme, irresponsible 
authority. It does not hold itself amenable to any- 
thing in man, but it claims the whole man as ame- 
nable to itself Its most marked, and indeed its 
essential attribute, vs^hen truly heard, is its authority. 
This authority assumes to be paramount to all other 
forms of wisdom, and prudence, no less than over 
all the desires, appetites and affections. It holds 
even thought subordinate. Therefore evil thoughts, 
according to the wisdom of Christ, are wickedness. 
It does not base its distinctions between right and 
wrong, nor the authority of its commands and pro- 
hibitions, upon any prudential calculation of profit 



OF THE TWOFOLD NATURE OF MAN. 57 

and loss ; upon any good which man can foresee as 
resulting from the choice of the right, or evil foreseen 
as connected with the wrong. It gives forth au- 
thoritative distinctions between these things, without 
respect to man's insights and reasonings upon the 
fruit of actions. It marks for man one thing as 
RIGHT, and commands him to love, to choose and 
to do that thing ; while within and under this in- 
junction is the assurance, that thus it shall be well 
with him ; he shall live. It stigmatizes another 
thing as wrong, and forbids him to love, and to 
choose, and to do it ; giving, as before, within the 
prohibition, the warning that, doing this, it shall not 
be well with him ; he shall die. But the conscience 
gives no further account of itself It tells him not 
whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth. It does not 
even inform him that the life it promises and the 
death it denounces have any consequential connex- 
ion with the things it commands and forbids. Often 
it takes part against the clearest foresight of the 
fruit of actions which is possible for man. For al- 
though he be assured that, by deceiving his neigh- 
bor to his hurt, he can gain the greatest advantage ; 
although he may not be able to conceive how any 
evil should ever come to himself out of this act, 
yet, if he hear the conscience truly, he will hear a 
distinct command enunciated in his heart, with abso- 
lute authority, This is wrong ; this thou shalt not 
do ; doing this it shall not he well with thee ; thou 
shalt surely die. And when he is called to give 
impartial justice between himself and his neighbor, 
3*- 



58 OF THE TWOFOLD NATURE OF MAN. 

although he may not be able to see what benefit can 
accrue to himself from it, although it may require 
him to reduce himself to beggary, deprive his wife 
and children of all support, and cast them helpless 
upon the charities of the world, and even to sacrifice 
his own life, yet, if he hear the conscience truly, it 
will utter but one command in his heart, as before, 
with the voice of absolute authority. This is right 
and good ; this do, and it shall he well with thee ; 
thou shalt live. This is the informing light, the 
wisdom, the lavv^ of man's spiritual nature. This, 
because, where it is truly and purely heard, where 
other voices are not mistaken for its voice, it is a re- 
velation of God's distinctions between what is good 
and evil, is called in the Scriptures the Wisdom of 
God in man. That it is through the conscience that 
the voice and authority of God truly reaches the 
human soul, is evident from, and acknowledged by 
all Christians in this fact, that when a sinner is con- 
victed of his sin by the Holy Ghost, it is in the con- 
science that this conviction is felt. 

These two natures in man centre in the unity of 
one person in the will. This is the power of practi- 
cal choice. It is the seat and centre of personality. 
It stands, as it were (for here everything must be 
expressed by figures), between the earthly and spirit- 
ual in man, united to both; between the sensual wis- 
dom and the conscience, comprehending and receiv- 
ing both into itself; solicited by the one, commanded 
and obliged by the other. 

Most inadequate and feeble is this view ; for here 



OF THE TWOFOLD NATURE OF MAN. 59 

all words can but mock and caricature the reality. 
But it may serve to exhibit the possibility for man 
of two very different characters and courses of Kfe. 
For on the one side, is the wisdom of the earthly 
nature, giving its practical judgments from the earthly 
point of view, according to the appetites, desires and 
affections which belong to this nature, and according 
to what seems good in its own eyes. On the other 
hand is the spiritual nature, with its knowledge of 
God, and of the eternal world, and its consciousness 
of immortality, with its light and law, the authorita- 
tive commands and prohibitions of the conscience. 
Each of these prompts the will to choose according 
to itself. 

As the will turns its face away from the con- 
science to the light of the sensual nature, receives 
the authoritative wisdom of the conscience with re- 
ference to the sensual wisdom, obeys the latter in 
opposition to the former, it becomes the will of the 
Jlesh. The man chooses and acts and lives accord- 
ing to his own wisdom^ jleshly wisdom^ sensual wis- 
dom, the carnal mind. His joys are the pleasures of 
the sense, and of the knowledge peculiar to this mind. 
He lives after the Jlesh. The light of his life, his law 
of practical choice between good and evil, is the 
wisdom of the flesh. The spiritual is subjugated and 
controlled by the carnal. The free will itself, origi- 
nally, truly, and properly spiritual and free, falls 
under the dominion of nature, of the earthly in man. 
The earthly nature enters into the spiritual, so to 
speak ; that is to say, it is reflected in it, thereby de- 



80 OJ^ tuM I'WOFOLiy NATtrRE Or MAN. 

grading and defiling and corrupting it by reducing it 
to bondage, "When it was intended to be superior and 
to control. Thus its light is darkened. The con- 
science is dethroned from its original and rightful 
supremacy, and its oracles, although not wholly 
drowned by the turmoil and clamor of rebellious pas- 
sions, are no longer heard with the ancient fulness 
and certainty and authority. Thus it is now with 
man in his natural state. 

But on the contrary, as the will receives the soli- 
citations of the earthly nature with sole reference to 
the obliging and controlling power of the conscience ; 
holds all the judgments of the sensual wisdom in sub- 
ordination to the Wisdom of God, with its face turned 
steadily to the shrine of his oracles | accepts the au- 
thority of God thus revealed as supreme, and chooses 
according to his commands, it is a spiritual will. The 
light of the spiritual and superior nature is reflected 
upon the earthly and subordinate nature, controlling 
all the practical judgments of the sensual wisdom, 
into harmony with the Wisdom of God ; so that all 
the acts of the man have a spiritual character, 
which no act can have in the brute. Whether he 
eat or drink, he does all with unconditional reference 
to the oracles of the conscience to know what is com- 
manded and forbidden there. No outward act which 
he voluntarily chooses can be indifferent. In some 
sort, the whole man is spiritual. He loves and re- 
joices in the holy, in meekness and humility and 
purity, in God. This is his meat and his drink, to 
please God, He walks with God, God dwells with 



OF THE TWOFOLD NATURE OF MAN. 61 

him and in him, as the light and wisdom of his life. 
Thus we may conceive of man in his original state. 
That which is here to be observed and borne in 
mind, as necessary that man should continue in the 
estate in which he was created, at unity with God 
and with himself, is the complete subordination of 
the earthly nature with its wisdom to the spiritual 
and its informing light, the wisdom of God revealed 
through the conscience in the form of authority. 
The inferiority and subjection of the one, and the 
superiority and control of the other, are the truths 
which are here symbolized by the earthly and divine 
sources from which respectively they are derived. 
The one is of the earth, earthy, the light of the other 
is the Lord from heaven. Nor are these words mis- 
applied. For it was the same Word of God, which 
was revealed in Jesus Christ, of which he was the 
embodiment or incarnation, called in the passage 
here alluded to the Lord from heaven, which created 
man, and breathed into his nostrils his own breath as 
the spirit of man's life. It was this Word of God 
whose oracles of distinction between good and evil 
were made known through the conscience of man 
with absolute authority; and which, though now 
they are scarcely, heard and but little heeded, and 
often confounded with the voice of passion, and the 
judgments of the sensual wisdom, were given to the 
first man with all fulness and certainty and power. 



62 OF MARRIAGE. 



CHAPTER VII. 



OF MARRIAGE. 



"Jehovah God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he 
took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh thereof; and the rib 
which Jehovah God had taken from man, made he into a woman, 
and brought her unto the man." 

** Male and female created he them, and blessed them, and 
called their name Man." 

The symbolical and significant character of this ac- 
count of the creation of woman has always been 
perceived. The truths which are drawn from it by 
the Lord and his Apostles are of the highest import- 
ance, and indispensable to the right understanding 
of the sin of the first man, in hearkening to the voice 
of his wife rather than to the voice of God. In this 
symbol is contained the whole doctrine of the mar- 
riage relation between man and woman, as the whole 
gospel is contained in the sacraments. 

The first truth here symbolized is that the husband 
and wife are one, as the body of the woman was 
made out of a part of the body of the man. This 
is also set forth in the words. He called their name, 
Man. That this was signified by this manner of the 
creation of his wife was immediately perceived by 
Adam, and expressed. This is now hone of my 



OF MARRIAGE. 63 

hones, and jlesh oj my Jlesh ; she shall be called 
woman^ because she was taken out of man. Also the 
Lord declares that this unity was not to be confined 
to the first man and woman, by applying the words, 
They twain shall be one Jlesh, to the men and women 
of his day. 

This union between man and woman in marriage 
is mystical. It cannot be explained in words, nor 
yet perhaps distinctly conceived of in idea. It is 
none the less real and true. The union between the 
soul and the body is mystical ; that between Christ 
and the believer is mystical ; yet both are none the 
less real and true. The man and his wife were at 
first, and are intended now to be, as truly one as 
that from which the body of the woman was formed 
was truly a part of the body of man. 

But in order to know in what the man and woman 
are one, and in what they are not one, by marriage, 
we must carefully observe the force of the words 
which are used in the New Testament to describe 
this unity. This is now bone of my bones, and Jlesh 
of my Jlesh. They twain shall be one Jlesh. To 
this language, taken in its greatest rigor, both Jesus 
and his Apostles carefully confine themselves in 
their explanation of the doctrines of marriage. But 
when they describe the unity between Christ and 
the believer, they ascend to more spiritual expres- 

* She shall be called fiUDi^, female-man, wombman, woman, be- 
cause she was taken out of XOH^* man, as distinguished from 
woman. The two words differ only in that the one is masculine, 
the other feminine ; precisely as the words lion and lioness. 



64 OF MARRIAGE. 

sions. For he that is joined to the Lord is not only 
a member of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones, 
but also. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit 
with him. This latter phrase is never used to de- 
scribe the marriage unity. Also Jesus declares 
that in the spiritual world, they neither marry nor 
are given in marriage. This unity is not therefore 
in its own nature spiritual — a union of the spirits of 
man and woman. But it is a oneness of the earthly 
and mortal nature and life ; of the desires and 
affections, of the sympathies and loves of this nature ; 
and of the wisdom and prudence which stands at its 
head. In virtue of marriage, the man and his wife 
are to love each other as their own flesh, to think 
the same things, to follow the same counsels in re- 
spect to all that pertains to the mortal life. By 
marriage they twain are not one spirit but one 
flesh. 

The second truth here symbolized, and drawn 
from the symbol by St. Paul, is that the woman is to 
be in subjection to her husband. From the argu- 
ments by which he proves the subjection of the 
woman it is evident that, although it is first men- 
tioned not until she had sinned, for reasons which 
we shall hereafter see, it was in force, in her estate 
of innocence, in virtue of her creation. For he 
proves it from four considerations ; because she was 
not created first, but the man ; because he was not 
taken out of her, but she out of him ; because he 
was not made for her, but she for him ; and be- 
cause he was not deceived into transgression, but 



OF MARRIAGE. 65 

she was. Three of these reasons were in full force 
before she sinned ; therefore that which they are 
adduced to prove, namely, her subjection, was in 
full force before she sinned. The conclusion is in- 
evitable. The grounds and reasons of her subjec- 
tion are drawn from the manner of her creation, 
and lie in the very nature of woman as distinguished 
from man. 

But it was the earthly nature alone which was 
taken out of man. It is this alone in woman which 
is united by marriage to him for the term of its 
life. Therefore it is this alone which is put under 
subjection to him. Her spiritual nature is free of 
her human husband. With respect to it, she is his 
equal, and perhaps, for some reasons hereafter to be 
considered, greatly his superior. He has no right 
of control over anything in her but that which be- 
longs to her inferior nature, and to the mortal hfe. 
To suppose the spiritual nature in woman to be re- 
sponsible to man, and under his control, is to deny 
its responsibility to God alone ; and involves the 
consequence that, if he command her to do wrong, 
she is bound of right to obey. But this is absurd. 
When he commands her to do wrong, she is to dis- 
obey. God is the only Husband and Lord of the 
spiritual nature, both of man and woman. 

From this it is evident, that the subjection of the 
woman to the man is not a mere official relation, as 
some have supposed. This nature in her, which 
alone is in subjection to him, is of itself inferior to, 
and dependent upon him. To signify this very 



6Q OF MARRIAGE. 

thing it was made of a part of him, for him, taken 
out of him. She is less of statm-e than he. Her 
physical strength is inferior to his. Her constitution 
is more frail and delicate than his. Her appetites 
are weaker than his. No less inferior to him is she 
in logical powers, in that wisdom and prudence 
which stands at the head of the earthly and mortal 
nature. She is less at home in the walks of physi- 
cal science, and in business, than is he. In all that 
pertains exclusively to the mortal life, and which 
perishes with it, she is inferior to man, weaker than 
he, dependent upon him, and under his protection, 
guidance and control. In respect to this nature, 
she is, so to speak, but an individuated part of man, 
his reflected glory, and, within its sphere, whatever 
the wisdom of an infidel age may determine to the 
contrary, it is her highest glory to obey her 
husband. 

From this symbol other truths are drawn by the 
Lord and his apostles ; but for the purposes of this 
chapter it is only necessary to mention one or two 
more. Because this union is real and true it can be 
dissolved by two causes only, infidelity to the union 
itself, and by the death of either of the parties. And 
because it pertains to the mortal nature only it is 
really and truly dissolved by death. Have ye not 
heard that he which made them from the beginning 
made them male and female^ and said, They twain 
shall he onejiesh ? What therefore God hath joined let 
no man put asunder. Whosoever shall put away his 
wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her 



OF MARRIAGE. 67 

to commit adultery. No less clear is he in respect to 
the actual dissolution of the marriage union by death. 
He said to the Sadducees, when they spoke of mar- 
riage after the resurrection, Ye do err, not knowing 
the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the 
resury^ection they neither marry nor are given in 
marriage ; hut are as the angels of God. So that, 
according to the case presented to him, if a woman 
have had seven husbands, it makes no difference with 
her in the spiritual world. Also St. Paul declares 
that upon the death of her husband the woman is free 
to marry again. This could not be unless the mar- 
riage union were really and truly dissolved by death. 

But the hope of reunion with departed friends is 
not therefore, as some have supposed, a vain dream. 
For ye sorroy) not even as others who have no hope. 
All the spirits of the redeemed are united in a real 
oneness, from which flows eternally the most blissful 
love and intercommunion. This spiritual union may 
begin on earth between married people, and become 
more and more perfect until death. But it does not 
exist in virtue of any marriage here, nor of any hu- 
man relation, but in virtue of something higher than 
marriage, in virtue of the union of their souls with 
God, consummated and perfected by the indwelling 
in each of the one and same Spirit of Christ. 

Now the institution of marriage was erected in the 
bosom of the daily life of man to be an abiding sym- 
bol of the relation which existed between his soul 
and God. As such it is always spoken of and re- 
ferred to in the Scriptures. Thy Maker is thy hus- 



68 OF MARRIAGE. 

hand, St. Paul calls it a mystery,^ which it truly 
is, in the proper sense of that word, and uses it 
as the symbol of the spiritual union of the soul 
with Christ. Throughout the prophets God is 
everywhere represented as the husband of his peo- 
ple. In the New Testament the Church is the bride 
of Christ. The earthly nature of the woman, in its 
inferiority, dependence upon, and subjection to, the 
man, was intended to keep ever before the eyes of 
both their own inferiority, dependence upon, and sub- 
jection to God. As the man is the head of this na- 
ture in woman, so is Christ the head of the Church. 
As the woman, in respect to her inferior nature, is 
the reflected glory of the man, so is the Church the 
reflected glory of Christ. The corresponding relation 
of man to the woman was intended to reflect steadily 
into the human soul, the knowledge of the relation 
which God bears to it. For this purpose this insti- 
tution was set up by God himself; and it is indispen- 
sable in society to the spiritual well-being of man, as 
are all the institutions of God. To subserve this pur- 
pose is the highest glory of marriage. Woe to them, 
therefore, who seek to destroy the whole force of this 
symbol by marriages in which the subjection of the 
woman is denied, or not recognised. They do all 

* The word nvsrriptov, mystery , in its primary acceptation desig- 
nates a symbolical representation of truth. In the Eleusinian mys- 
teries among the Athenians, the doctrines of a future state, the im- 
mortality of the soul, and many others, were clothed with a sym- 
bolical form, and exhibited to the people, but explained only to the 
initiated. 



. OF MARRIAGE. 69 

they can to destroy out of the human soul, the con- 
viction of its inferiority, dependence upon, and sub- 
jection to God, by violating that sacred symbol of it 
which God has established. And v^oe to them* 
who represent the estate of marriage as one of infe- 
rior holiness to that of celibacy. They blaspheme 
God's own appointed means of grace. 

When the symbolical and significant character of 
this institution is lost sight of it comes to be regarded 
as something in its own nature spiritual and perma- 
ment, and is idolized. Into this very mistake the 
Jews fell in respect to the nature of their ceremonial 
law ; and to point out their error, St. Paul introduces 
marriage as an acknowledged temporal relation. 
But they had become so possessed with the idea that 
their law was something substantial and everlasting, 
instead of symbolical and temporary, that when He 
came who was its substance and fulfilment, they 
rejected him. They had become so wedded to the 
forms of their holy law, in receiving which they had 

* Discerning the symbolical character of marriage, the Romish 
church has erected it into a sacrament. With no less propriety, 
and for the same reason, she should have made the birth of an in- 
fant, the relation between the child and the parent, and death 
itself sacraments. These also are holy symbols of spiritual truth, 
ordained to be such by God. Nay for the same reason she should 
have made the crushing of the head of the serpent a sacrament. 
For this is a divinely ordained symbol of Christ's most blessed tri- 
umph over *' that old serpent, that is, the devil." But how she, 
holding marriage as a sacrament, can teach that they who partake 
of this means of grace, must therefore be less holy than they who 
neglect it, is wonderful. Yet such is the folly of human wisdom 
when it usurps the throne of the Wisdom of God. 



70 OF MARRIAGE. 

been so greatly honored and blessed, that they could 
not look to the end of it, to that which it signified 
and was intended to usher in. They could not bear 
that it should be done away by the substance of it, 
taking its place. 

So it is with thousands of married people who 
tenderly love each other. God has given them 
something so excellent, so full of strength and conso- 
lation in marriage ; they are so carried away with 
its human love, and its temporal joys, that they can- 
not discern the divine truth which it symbolizes. 
They cannot bear that it should be done away, 
should serve out its time, and give place to the sub- 
stance of which it is the shadow. They are grieved 
and pained at the thought that it should end at death. 
The widowed wife looks forward to reunion with her 
departed husband after death, as her grea^e^^ consola- 
tion, instead of rejoicing most of all in the hope of the 
perfection of her union with Christ in the spiritual world. 
The dying husband cannot bear the thoughtof his wife's 
second marriage. He wishes her to rejoin him in 
the spiritual world, as his own dearest friend, as his 
own appropriated spiritual wife. The thought that 
she should love others there as well as she loves him, is 
painful. He cannot receive the truth that in the 
resurrection they neither marry ^ nor are given in 
marriage. He knows not that when the substance 
is come, by it the shadow is done away. He cannot 
rejoice that the perfection of his union with Christ 
shall fulfil and absorb the institution of marriage, as 
Christ fulfils and abolishes the law of Moses. He 



OF MARRIAGE. 71 

SO clings to this form, shadow, symbol, that when He 
who is its substance is offered him, because Christ 
must be loved with a devotion and fervor above this, 
and every other thing, he rejects him in spirit, as the 
Jews rejected him in the flesh. To be married to 
Christ is something so hollow and unsubstantial to 
his idolatrous heart that it can give him no pleasure 
unless he may have his wife again ; as the deliver- 
ance from sin which Christ offered the Jews was 
something so shadowy and unsatisfactory that they 
could not receive it in the place of that deliverance 
from subjection to the Romans which they desired and 
expected. The real feeling of thousands when they 
die, if it were put into words, is that they will bear, 
because they must, as well as they can, their separa- 
tion until they shall be reunited in heaven, instead of 
rejoicing that the shadow is passing away, and the 
substance coming into its place. Thus also the Jews 
to this day, bear their separation from their dear law 
and sacrifices in the fond and vain hope that they 
shall one day be reunited to be no more parted for 
ever. 

This is a most prevalent and deadly idolatry, 
whose root is the same feeling which led Adam to 
hearken to the voice of his wife rather than to 
the Voice of God. There is no such thing as spirit- 
ual wives and husbands. This is a phantom of earthly 
beauty, mistaking which for an angel of light, many 
have been beguiled from the simplicity,* and often, 

* Swedenborg and his followers make the marriage relation to be 



72 



OF MARRIAGE. 



from the purity of the Gospel. The desh'e to 
reproduce the marriage relation in the spiritual 
world, rather than to have it fulfilled and abolished 
by the perfection of the union of the soul with Christ, 
is perhaps the most subtle guise of light in which the 
enemy can array himself for the destruction of the 
unwary. For the genuine feelings of human love 
make their appearance in the heart after a manner so 
unselfish and pure, so free from appetite, their cer- 
tain fruit, but which they have not yet borne, with 
such soul-subduing sweetness and pleasure, with such 
an assurance that they can never pass away, that it 
seems as if they must be of a spiritual and immortal 
nature. It seems to the idolator, as if heaven itself 
could give nothing better than this, and could be 
nothing without this. Yet all this, in its greatest 
strength and purity and happiness, is but a type, a 
symbol, a shadow. It is no more in comparison with 
its substance, that spiritual unity with Christ which it 
symbolizes, and the love and eternal joy which flow 
out of that, than the body is to the spirit ; than the 

a principal source of the joys of heaven. Therefore in order to be 
consistent the *' New Church" does not allow second marriages. It 
is needless to say, that any view which does not allow of second 
marriages is, ipso facto, a denial of the inspiration of Paul's epistles. 
But it is to be observed that with all their boast of greater spirit- 
uality than that of the " Old Church," they have fallen into an 
error, which, as exhibited above, is precisely the same in substance 
with that of the Jews, who would reproduce in their Messianic 
kingdom, that temporal dominion, which was but a type and sym- 
bol of that which was to fulfil and abolish it, the spiritual reign of 
Christ in every soul. 



OF MAERIAG13. 73 

bread and the wine are to the Ufe of God in the soul 
of man. 

Out of this species of formuHsm and idolatry often 
arises a feeUng which is revoked at, and condemns 
second marriages. Not unfrequently this is ascribed 
to greater purity of heart, and spirituaHty of view. 
It is true indeed that second marriages may be, and 
perhaps commonly are, sought from motives and 
feelings more corrupt even than those which con- 
demn them. Yet it is none the less true that, because 
they are distinctly and pointedly sanctioned by the 
Word of God, they who condemn such relations are 
of necessity found in an attitude of rebellion against 
his Wisdom. Every feeling in man's heart which is 
revolted at anything sanctioned by God is corrupt to 
the very core. It is to be repented of, and cast out 
as evil. This error is precisely the same feeling and 
view, in the substance of it, which led the Jew to 
pride himself upon his superior fidelity to the law of 
Moses after it had been fulfilled and aboHshed. It is 
the idolatrous worship of the form and shadow ; and 
it leads to the rejection of the substance and spirit. 

Against this form of idolatry, in which the rela- 
tions of the earthly nature in man are regarded as 
something spiritual and permanent, the Lord warns 
us in the most awful words — words^ which seem to 
many unnecessarily strong and harsh. He that lov- 
eth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of 
me ; and he that loveth son or daughter more than 
me, is not worthy of me. If a man come to me, and hate 
not father and mother and wife and children and 



74 OF MARRIAGE. 

brethren and sisters, he cannot he my disciple. 
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth : I 
tell you, nay, hut a sword. These are all relations 
of the earthly nature and the mortal life, appointed 
to be typical and therefore temporary ; having their 
substance and fulfilment in the eternal and spiritual 
union of the believer w^ith Christ, as the sacrifice of 
the paschal lamb had its substance and fulfilment in 
the sacrifice of Calvary. The sw^ord of Christ 
severs these relations by bringing in the substance 
which they shadow forth and prefigure, though they 
be so dear to their idolatrous worshipper that he 
cries out with Micah to the Danites, Ye have taken 
away my gods, and what have I more ? And yet 
they who shall be accounted worthy to attain unto 
the resurrection of life, shall be as well satisfied in 
the enjoyment of their perfect and eternal marriage 
union with Christ, to dispense with all these relations 
by which it is now symbolized, as the Christian is to 
dispense with the sacrifices of the ritual law. 

Perhaps to some these views may seem to be cold 
and austere. But nothing can be cold or austere 
which is sanctioned by the Word of God. They are 
not found to be such in life and experience. He only 
can know that marriage is honorable in all, and the 
bed undejiled, who sees in it what Paul saw, a most 
expressive symbol of the mutual relation between 
the soul of man and God. The wife who sees in the 
relation of her earthly nature to her husband a sym- 
bol of the inferiority, dependence, and subjection of 



OF MARRIAGE. 75 

her spiritual nature to Christ — she only truly loves 
and seeks to please her husband. 

The man who knows that his love and tenderness 
towards, and treatment of, his wife, is to keep ever 
present to his mind the love of Christ for him, he 
only can act towards her as Christ has acted towards 
him. Nothing can hallow, and consecrate, and 
purify, and exalt to its true position the institution 
of marriage but the ever present thought of that 
holy mystery which it symbolizes, prefigures, and 
ushers in. 



76 OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 

** Jehovah God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he 
put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made 
Jehovah God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and 
good for food ; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, 
and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

•' And Jehovah God commanded the man saying. Of every tree 
of the garden thou mayest freely eat ; but of the tree of the know- 
ledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day 
that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." 

In order the better to understand this account of the 
garden of Eden, that is to say, the garden of DeKght, 
several things must be carefully attended to. First 
is the authoritative law of good and evil here given 
to man ; secondly, after v^hat manner this law was 
symbolized under the two trees in the midst of the 
garden ; and thirdly, with what feelings it was recog- 
nised by man, which made the abode of his inno- 
cence a garden of delight to him. 

What this law of good and evil is, which was origi- 
nally written upon the tablet of the heart of man, we 
learn with perfect certainty from our Lord and Sa- 
viour Jesus Christ, who came to restore it after it had 
been defaced by sin. Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with 



OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 77 

all thy mind and with all thy strength^ and thy neigh- 
bor as thyself. This is the law which divides be- 
tween what is good and what evil for man. And 
there is no other possible. For it is not an arbitrary 
enactment. It has its eternal and immutable founda- 
tion in the very nature of God himself. No law can 
come from him which is not, in the substance of it, a 
transcription of his nature. But his nature is the 
standard of good and evil. That which agrees with 
it is good, and therefore good ; that which is opposed 
to it is evil, and therefore evil. The transgression of 
this law therefore has a significancy transcendently 
above all that is evil for man. It is rebellion against 
God. Obedience to it is a good equally above all 
that is good for man. It glorifies God. Thus much 
it seemed necessary distinctly to declare to avoid the 
imputation of a mere utilitarian view, which the fol- 
lowing remarks might otherwise seem to imply, but 
which is abhorrent to every spiritual mind. 

For the law of God not only distinguishes between 
what is good and evil with respect to his nature, but 
also with respect to man. It is, and always was 
necessary, yea, indispensable to man, that by it he 
might know to choose the good and refuse the evil 
with unerring certainty. 

In order the more clearly to perceive this we must 
consider that the things which are good for man have 
their opposites which are, and must be, evil for him. 
If truth, temperance, the love of God and his 
neighbor, be good for him, their opposites, delusion 
and falsehood, intemperance, to hate God and his 



78 OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 

neighbor, must be evil for him. It could not be 
otherwise. 

Also, we must consider that, as we learn from ob- 
servation and experience, the nature of man is such 
that all his actions have a reflex influence upon him- 
self, good for good, evil for evil. Every act whether 
of desire, thought or volition, not only goes forth 
upon other objects, but also returns upon himself 
with its effects and consequences, and leaves him 
somewhat different from that he was before. When 
he indulges a desire for stimulating drinks, it is 
strengthened, his power of resistance is weakened, 
and future indulgence facilitated. By relieving the 
distresses of the poor his disposition towards works 
of that sort is increased, and he is rendered more be- 
nevolent. By the exercise of pure and holy affec- 
tions he becomes more pure and holy ; by impure 
thoughts and desires and acts, he is rendered more 
impure. Of these things many have fatal experience. 
For this fruit of actions is something so subtle and 
far-reaching that it often escapes our notice alto- 
gether, so that we refuse to be warned. Yet it is as 
certain and inevitable as the decrees of God. The 
effects of a man's actions upon himself are like the 
falling of a single drop of water upon the rock. It 
seems to leave the stone just as it was before. But 
after it has fallen for years the effect of the first drop 
is so much increased as to make itself known : so 
that in time the whole rock is worn away. Thus a 
single evil act or thought or desire may seem to leave 
the man unchanged, but it does not. See the drunkard 



OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 79 

after a few years of indulgence — how changed ! how 
transformed ! how fallen from all that he once was ! 

Still further it must be observed that the effects of 
man's actions upon himself, good for good, evil for 
evil, have a ratio of increase peculiar to themselves. 
For after every act he enters into subsequent 
agency, in some sort, a new creature. That which 
he being changed now does, also re-enters into him 
anew, and leaves him still different from that he 
was before. Hence he is changed from glory to 
glory ^ or from death unto death. To this process 
which is perfectly indisputable, evidently no natural 
limits can be assigned. Left to itself, in the very 
nature of the case, it runs on while the man con- 
tinues to exist. 

Now because these effects of man's actions upon 
himself run on without any assignable limit, he must 
continually find consequences and results evolved 
out of his actions which it was impossible for him 
to foresee. And in fact, that which seems to us evil 
or painful to do or to suffer often produces in and 
for us the most blessed results. That which seems 
to our wisdom good and profitable is often fraught 
with the most disastrous consequences. The good 
or evil fruits of actions do not appear to a finite 
intelligence and prudence except through experience, 
and therefore are not to be known until they are 
past, and cannot be recalled. 

From this it is p'ain that man, no less than every 
other creature, must stand between two worlds of 
good and evil, to him infinite, to choose aright be- 



80 OP UA-^ IM l*ttE GARBEM OF PARADISE* 

tween which his own insight into probabihties, con- 
sequences and results is wholly inadequate. In other 
words, mail cannot knou) good and evil. To discern 
aright between these things by his own wisdom and 
prudence he must have an infinite knowledge ; that 
is to say, a comprehension of all the consequences 
and effects of his actions, which are infinite* But 
this knowledge is competent to God alone. There- 
fore without a law and guide of life from God only 
wise, entirely independent of consequences, he must 
be liable continually to choose amiss, and to pierce 
himself through with many sorrows. He must have 
something to indicate what is good for him and 
what is evil, before he has tried it, because by the 
experience of evil he must perish. 

From this also it is evident that this law and guide 
of life must be an authoritative one ; that is to say, 
it cannot give its reasons for its commands and pro- 
hibitions. For this only is authority in a true and 
proper sense. These reasons, so far as they per- 
tain to the well-being of man, not to speak of the 
essential and eternal difference between good and 
evil, having its foundation in the incomprehensible 
nature of God, are the infinite and ever evolving 
consequences of man's actions upon himself. These 
cannot be made known even by a revelation to a 
finite intelligence. This law of God therefore can- 
not give any other reason or sanction for its com- 
mands and prohibitions than this. If thou shalt obey, 
it shall he well with thee; thou shalt live: If thou 



OP MAN IN THE GARDEN OP PARADISE. 81 

shalt disobey^ it shall not he well with thee ; thou 
shalt surely die. 

Such a guide of life, such a criterion between 
good and evil for man, is the law of God, as re- 
vealed through Christ. This law does not make 
anything good for man by commanding it. It com- 
mands only what is good in itself, or agreeable with 
the nature of God, and therefore good for man. It 
does not make a thing evil by forbidding it. It for- 
bids only what is evil in itself, or opposed to the 
nature of God, therefore evil for man. The law of 
God is nothing arbitrary. That which it commands 
is good for man, that which it forbids is evil for him, 
though there were no law. It is given to him by 
his Heavenly Father to be to him an infallible 
criterion of choice between good and evil, that he 
may know to choose the good and refuse the evil, 
without calculating the consequences of his actions, 
which it is impossible for him to do. It is the Wis- 
dom of God for man. Therefore it comes to him 
in the form of absolute authority, with the promise 
of eternal life as the consequence of obedience, and 
with the penalty of eternal death as the consequence 
of disobedience, instead of an attempt at explanation 
of the reasons upon which its commands and pro- 
hibitions are based. The law is holy and the com" 
mandment is holy and just and good. 

Unfolding and applying this law for his disciples, 
our Lord reveals this blessing which is in it. Bless- 
ed are the meek. Blessed are the pure in heart. 

Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the peace- 

4# 



82 OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 

makers. Blessed are they which do hunger and 
thirst after righteousness. The Almighty and Eter- 
nal and Self-sufficient God does not command his 
creatures from the love of authority, merely for the 
gratification of seeing them obey, or of punishing 
them for disobedience. He cannot be benefited at 
all by their obedience, neither can he suffer from 
their disobedience. His essential glory and eternal 
blessedness cannot be increased nor diminished by 
anything that they can do. In giving his law to 
man he is moved by infinite love, v^hich is his es- 
sence. The good for man, v^ithout which every- 
thing else, when it has worked itself out, must pro- 
duce the fruit of emptiness, bitterness and death, is 
to be and to do what the wisdom of God has mark- 
ed as good for him. To he spiritually minded is life. 
The evil for man, without which all things which 
are not joyous for the present but grievous^ shall one 
day be found to have worked out a far more exceed- 
ing and eternal weight of glory, is to be and to do 
what the wisdom of God has marked as evil for him. 
To he carnally minded is death. Therefore, This 
shall he the covenant that I will make with the house 
of Israel and the house of Judah. I will put my law 
in their inward parts and write it in their hearts. 
Therefore the mission of Jesus is to save his people 
from their sins. For man saved from his sins, that 
is to say, brought into obedience to this law, into 
holiness, is saved from every evil. Left in his sins 
he is saved from no evil. For sin is the evil, and 
the only evil, from which he suffers. 



OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 83 

This is the nature of that law of distinction between 
good and evil which was originally written in the 
heart, the most spiritual being of man — the law of 
love transcribed from the very essence of God which 
is love. Nor is this a conjecture. It is proved by 
the fact that it is this law, and not another, which 
Christ came to re-write upon man's heart, and thus 
to save him from the evil which he suffered in the 
fall. Therefore it is this law which has been defaced 
from his heart by sin. Of this law the conscience in 
man was the organ, so to speak, the most faithful re- 
flection. While therefore he should continue to 
reflect God's distinctions between good and evil 
thus revealed in the form of authority ; while the 
will should continue to receive the suggestions of the 
earthly nature with sole reference to the wisdom of 
God, and the whole practical life should continue to 
follow this infallible guide, he could not err. He 
could not mistake evil for good, nor choose what 
would degrade and defile his soul, and destroy his 
own well-being. But the moment he should erect 
his own wisdom into a guide and law of distinction 
between good and evil, and choose what might seem 
good in its eyes independently of, and in opposition 
to, the Wisdom of God, not only must he rebel against 
God, that is to say, commit sin, but he must destroy 
his own well-being and plunge himself into the world 
of evil. 

To guard his innocence, to preserve his spiritual 
life he was placed by his heavenly father in the gar- 
den of Paradise. 



84 OF Man In fnii (JAMDE-fv of I^aradis*!. 

For the child-man, ereated in the- image of God, 
reflecting his lil^enesSj and without experience, a 
|)lac6 of abode was necessary, Where his earthly 
nature might find an appropriate sphere* What 
other could be suitable to his innocence but that 
which is described in the words which stand at the 
head of this chapter ? It was necessary that his out- 
ward environment should correspond with the purity 
of his inWard nature and life. Had it been other- 
Wise, since, by metos of his earthly nature, he was 
connected with the physical Worldj he would have 
been constantly liable to receive impressions from 
without opposed to thai ^'hich was within. Conflict 
Would have arisen from this cause ; while from the 
union of two natures in one , person, physical evil 
might have passed over and affected his spiritual 
Well-beings Also, We have seen that there is a de- 
mand in the very constitution of mail for an outward 
and visible reflection or symbol of the truth by which 
he lives ; that this is not only necessary to the per- 
fection and happiness of his life, but also to nourish 
and maintain it. But the truth by which alone it 
was possible for man to live was, that he could not 
know good and evil by his own wisdom and fore- 
sight of the fruit of actions ; that upon this point he 
must be implicitly submissive to the Wisdom of God 
revealed in his conscience in the form of authority, 
marking the good and stigmatizing the evil. Of this 
truth therefore, by eminence, he needed an outward 
reflection or symbol, for the same reason that we 
need the sacraments. 



OP MAN IN t'lli] tiAtlDEN oP PAUADlSE* 85 

God did not deny to man that which he needed to 
preserve him from error and to confirm him in inno- 
cence. He placed him in the midst of a garden 
which constituted the outward reflection and symbol 
of the mysteries of his inward life. Here his food 
stood ready prepared to his hand. Here his earthly 
nature had its appropriate sphere, where the widest 
range of his understanding could find nothing evil 
for him except, perhaps, one thing, and that was for- 
bidden by name. Here his senses, in the perfection 
of their action, asked only what was good, and were 
hallowed by the presence and power of the spiritual 
good of which they were the symbols. For as his 
body and form were consecrated as the symbol of 
his inward nature and spiritual characteristics, so the 
pleasures of the senses symbolized spiritual joys. 
This is evident from the manner in which the senses 
of the body are used in the Scriptures to signify and 
set forth spiritual things. Here his sense of smelling, 
always filled but never cloyed with the odors of 
blossoms and ripe fruit and with all sweet perfumes, 
symbolized that spiritual enjoyment which is attri- 
buted to God where it is said, that he smelled a sweet 
savor from the sacrifice of Noah ; to express which, 
frankincense, myrrh, aloes, cassia, and other power- 
ful aromas, were employed in religious worship. 
The taste of his food symbolized that spiritual good 
which is everywhere in the Scriptures represented 
by reference to this sense. Thus it is in the expressions. 
How sweet are thy words to my taste ; yea, sweeter 
than honey to my mouth ! It is my meat and my 
drink to do the will of my Father which is in heaven. 



86 OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 

His sense of sight, receiving with pleasure all that 
was grand and beautiful in the creation of God, sym- 
bolized that which is in like manner set forth under 
the gratification of seeing. Thus St. John declares 
the joy of the saved soul by the fact that it shall see 
its Redeemer as he is. Jesus also teaches us that 
there is a blessed vision of God which comes only to 
the pure in heart. His sense of hearing, filled and 
charmed by the whispering of gentle airs, the music 
of flowing waters, the choral chant of birds, and led 
by his own glad voice of thanksgiving and praise, 
symbolized that spiritual joy which is set forth in 
the Word under this sense. To express this St. 
Paul instructs us to speak to each other in psalms 
and hymns and spiritual songs. To touch the sources 
of these feelings music is yet retained as a part of 
the worship of God. While under his sense of feel- 
ing, that in which all the other senses are summed 
up, were symbolized the highest mysteries of his 
spiritual nature and joys. 

But in order that the truth by which he lived might 
be nourished and kept living in man's heart, it was 
symbolized in the most perfect manner. In the midst 
of the garden his heavenly Father placed two trees, 
both equally fair to the eye and fruitful ; the fruit of 
both equally, as far as man could see, good for food, 
between which he established a distinction by 
his authority, and called them by names significant 
of the truth which they symbolized. These were 
really and truly the most holy sacraments of the 
primeval church of God on earth. 



OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 87 

The first of these was named of God the Tt^ee of 
Life, and sanctioned for man's eating. In order that 
the symbol might be perfect, we may understand 
that the fruit of this tree contained the principle by 
which his earthly and mortal nature was to be sus- 
tained and nourished in perennial health and vigor. 
This indeed is not indispensable to its symbolical 
character, but seems to be indicated by the reason 
hereafter given for his expulsion from the garden, 
Lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree 
of life, and eat and live for ever. Also it is to be 
observed that the nature and effects of the bread and 
wine in the Eucharist, nourishing and strengthening 
and cheering the body, correspond to their holy sym- 
bolical character. 

In that this tree was named the tree of life, and given 
him for food, it symbolized before his eyes and reflect- 
ed back into his soul, the truth which was written there 
by the finger of God, that his spiritual life of innocence, 
love and happiness, was nourished and sustained by 
choosing the good which was marked for him as 
right, in the conscience by the wisdom and authority 
of his heavenly Father. In that there was no reason 
given him why this tree was distinguished for his 
food from the other, it symbolized the truth that he 
was to be implicitly obedient to this wisdom of 
authority revealed within him, without scrutinizing 
or questioning its commands, without attempting any 
prudential insight into the consequences and reasons 
upon which it was based, but in the unwavering 



88 O^ MAN IN THE GARDEN OP PARADISE. 

faith and assurance, that thus it should be well with 
him ; he should live. As the eating of this tree was 
life to his earthly and mortal nature, so implicit obe- 
dience to the wisdom of God should be life to his 
souL To him this tree was the most holy sacrament 
of the truth that he must be implicitly obedient to the 
wisdom of God marking the good for him as right 
and commanding it, that he might know to choose it 
and live. 

The other tree was named of God the Tree of the 
knowledge of good and evil. Of its fruit he was for- 
bidden to eat upon pain of death. In like manner, 
although it be not essential to its symbolical charac- 
ter, we may understand that this tree contained in 
its fruit the prolific germ of physical disease, which, 
taken into the constitution of man, must unfold itself, 
and bring forth all bodily maladies, until it should 
end in death to his earthly nature. 

As the former was the tree of Ufe, so this was the 
tree of death. In that it was named the tree of the 
knowledge of good and evil, and forbidden, it sym- 
bolized the truth that the knowledge of good and 
evil was forbidden to man ; that he could not dis- 
cern between these things by his wisdom and pru- 
dence. To him the evil would often seem fair and 
desirable as the good, because he could not know 
them in their essences, nor comprehend the everlast- 
ing consequences of his actions. In that the penalty 
of death was attached to the act of eating of the 
fruit of this tree, it symbolized the truth that for him 
to aspire to the knowledge of good and evil would be 



OF MAN IN run GJARCEN OF PARADISE. 89 

death to his soul ; that is to say, the moment he 
should attempt to discern between these things by 
his own wisdom independently of the Wisdom of 
God, to choose what might seem good, to refuse what 
might seem evil, to his own prudence, he must choose 
amiss, and, by his own foolish act, plunge himself 
into spiritual death. As the fruit of this tree should 
be death to his body, so the fi'uit of his choice be- 
tween good and evil must be death to his spiritual 
nature. To him this tree was the most holy sacra- 
ment and symbol of the truth that it would be his 
ruin to disobey that Wisdom of God which made its 
oracles known through his conscience, stigmatizing 
the evil as wrong, that thus he might be warned 
against what must degrade, defile and destroy his 
life of innocence, love and joy. 

There they stood, the two sacramental Trees, in 
the midst of the sphere of man's outward life, as in 
the midst of his soul stood the conscience, the shrine 
of the Word of God, through which God gave to him 
unerring oracles of distinction between good and 
evil. There they stood, the one marked as good, the 
other as evil, not for reasons which appeared upon 
the trees themselves, but by authority, as the Word 
of God gave his oracles of distinction between good 
and evil, not for reasons which man's insight into 
these things could in any wise comprehend, but by 
authority, with that knowledge of good and evil in 
their essential and eternal opposition, in that view of 
the everlasting fruit of actions, which were compe- 
tent only to the eternal and omniscient God. There 



90 OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 

they stood, ever before his eyes, bodying forth to his 
sense, and reflecting back into his soul, these spiritual 
truths by which he lived, to keep them ever fresh and 
living in his heart. There they stood, not to try his 
obedience, to see whether he would obey or not, as 
is so often supposed, but for which there is not the 
least foundation in the Word of God ; but given unto 
him by the infinite love of his heavenly Father, in 
perfect knowledge of his spiritual necessities, as 
means indispensable to the preservation of his spirit- 
ual life. There they stood, as in the bosom of the 
Church of Christ now stand her two sacraments, in- 
stituted and ordained by his wisdom, out of his love, 
to body forth to the sense of the faithful, and to re- 
flect steadily into their souls, the truth by which they 
live. 

It has been said by Voltaire that, " the account 
given in the Bible of the Fall of man only shows how 
much the God of Jews and Christians cares for his 
apples, and how little he loves his children." Fool ! 
Had that man, in whom the subtlety of the serpent 
was developed to its last term, to its highest perfec- 
tion, known anything of the moral and spiritual nature 
of man, had he ever reflected upon his own necessi- 
ties, or upon the symbols of religion and art, or even 
felt the inspiration of the true poet, he could not have 
made of himself such an egregious and transparent 
fool as is revealed in this sneer upon that, the divine 
significance of which had never dawned upon his 
darkened soul. 

The love of Jesus Christ for his people, for whom 



OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 91 

he laid down his hfe upon the cross, beams not from 
the sacrament of his broken body and shed blood 
with more certainty, than does the love of God from 
these two trees in the midst of the garden of para- 
dise. Without them the fall of man would not only 
have been possible, but perhaps, it would have been 
inevitable. For, as, where the sacraments which 
Christ has instituted, are rejected by men, there the 
truth which they symbolize soon perishes out of their 
hearts, so it would seem, if the truths by which man 
lived had not been bodied forth in, and reflected from 
these sacraments, must it have perished out of the 
heart of him, who, because his life was constituted in 
the union of body and soul, needed that the truth by 
which he lived should be presented to his senses, no 
less than that it should be written upon his heart. 

In order now that we may the better perceive with 
what feelings this authoritative law of distinction be- 
tween good and evil was recognised by the heart of 
man, we must consider that the law which was writ- 
ten upon his soul was that of love. He recognised 
the authority of God over him as the authority of 
love. His submission to it was the submission of love. 
His dependence upon God was the dependence of 
love. This it was which made the home of his inno- 
cence the garden of delight. 

This love was mutual between God and man. To 
teach us what it once was, and what it must be, in 
order that our well-being and happiness should be 
derived through it from heaven to earth, the great 
and good Creator has erected in the bosom of human 



92 OP MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 

life two most powerful and expressive symbols of its 
true character. These are the mutual relations be- 
tween the parents and the child, and that between 
the husband and the wife. For nature and the brute 
God is the Creator, because they are not capable of 
the knowledge of him to whom they owe their exist- 
ence, and all their enjoyments, therefore not capable 
of love to him. But for man he is both Father and 
Husband. These relations are consecrated as sym- 
bols by God himself, and assumed as such in all such 
expressions as the following : Our Father who art in 
heaven, I am married to you, Thy maker is thy hus- 
band. To understand therefore this relation of love 
between man and God, we must empty these divine 
symbols of some of their inexhaustible significance. 

The feeling of a father for his child is known only 
by experience ; but its manifestations in life are be- 
fore the eyes of all. The father lives in and for his 
child. Its pain is his pain. While he beholds it 
sporting for an hour in the fulness of its fresh and 
joyous Ufe, its presence is a rich reward for a day of 
severest labor. His wisdom and strength are taxed 
to the uttermost to provide for its support. When 
his spirits worn down with fatigue, begin to sink 
under the burden of his toil and care, the thought. 
It is for my child, pours new vigor into his heart and 
renerves his wearied arm. For the life of his child 
he would gladly give his own. O Absalom, my son, 
my son! Would God I had died for thee; O Absalom, 
my son, my son ! Such is the love of God for man, 
which, while he remained in his innocence, poured 



OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 93 

without any obstruction as the stream from the full 
spring, into his heart. ' 

But this symbol has not all its strength and perfec- 
tion without the love of the mother also, which is, 
if possible, more pure and self-sacrificing than that 
of the father. 

For every day may be seen the beautiful girl, 
whose life has been passed in the midst of luxury, 
courted, flattered and served by all around her, upon 
the birth of her first child, turned at once into a vo- 
luntary bondwoman. For it she is content to lay 
aside her dress and ornaments with which she was 
formerly so delighted to deck her beauty. Joyfully 
she foregoes the gay company of which she was wont 
to be the star and charm, for the presence of her 
child. For it she wastes her beauty and her health. 
She watches beside its infant slumbers until her cheek 
grows pale, and her eye loses its lustre. While she 
gazes upon its fair rounded limbs, and beholds its cheek 

" Mantling in first luxury of health," 

as it reposes so peacefully upon her bosom, her heart 
overflows upon it with love and exquisite happiness. 
But when it suffers, her heart is heavy and pained. 
She cannot rest. She performs for it the most me- 
nial offices. Her greatest unhappiness is that she 
cannot relieve its sufferings by bearing them herself. 
She knows no pleasure until the little one, the lord 
of her affections, smiles again in returning health and 
beauty. But if God should call her to surrender the 



94 OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 

child into his arms to crucify her idolatry, as he so 
often does, she droops like the flower whose root has 
been severed by the ploughshare. Not unfrequently 
she goes heart-pained to the grave. Rachel weeps 
for her children and will not be comforted because 
they are not. It is a beauty and a mystery. But 
the love of God for man, which filled his heart in his 
innocence, transcends all this ; for, although a woman 
may forget her sucking child, yet God cannot forget 
his children. 

On the other hand, the infant, while he hangs in 
conscious dependence and instinctive faith upon His 
parents, is the image of the child-man before he had 
sinned, in the simplicity of his faith and conscious 
dependence upon God his heavenly Father. Not 
that the child is by nature pure, but the evil in him 
is yet undeveloped. The relation which he bears to 
his parents is a symbol of the relation which the 
child of God bears to him. He lives and moves 
and has his being in the bosom of his parents' love. 
Their love shed abroad in his little heart awakens 
the sweetest love in return. If he is the offspring of 
Christians, and is trained up as a child of promise 
an heir of the submission of Christ, in his first years 
he lives in the untouched conviction that the wisdom 
and choice and will of his parents are better for 
him than his own. But because this preference of 
their will before his own pleasure springs from faith 
and love, it is not a bondage, but perfect freedom. 
His sweetest feeling, his dearest joy is the thought, 



OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 95 

It will please my father ; it will make my mother^ s 
heart glad. 

To express this infantine relation which the child 
of God bears to his Father, St. Paul puts into his 
mouth that word which, in some or other of its forms 
in almost all languages, children first learn to lisp to 
their parents, the word Abba. This is the child's 
word for father. And Jesus himself could find no- 
thing which would so well illustrate the character 
of a true child of God, as a little child. Therefore 
he says. Except ye be converted^ and become as little 
children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. 
Therefore also he calls those who believe on him, 
these little ones. 

This in its greatest strength is weak to describe 
and set forth the love with which man in his inno- 
cence recognised the authority of his heavenly 
Father over him. And because it is of itself inade- 
quate, God has established another expression of it 
which is more full and significant. This is the mar- 
riage union between man and woman. As we have 
seen, this union is ordained of God to be the holy 
symbol of the relation which the soul of man was 
intended to bear, and once bore, to him. To de- 
velope this symbolical character of marriage, and to 
work out the symbol in detail, is the object of that 
Song of Songs which is Solomon^ s. And woe to them 
who would degrade this divinest of sacred poems 
into the mere expressions of the earthly love ! 
Their souls are darkened by pollution so that they 



96 OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 

cannot see. The things which make for their peace 
are hid from their eyes. 

Marriage then between man and woman, accord- 
ing to the ordination of God, in that unity which has 
been ah^eady indicated, leads to the mutual supposi- 
tion of each other's happiness in place of their own, 
in all things pertaining to the mortal life. When it 
goes beyond this, as we have seen, it becomes idola- 
try, by the substitution in the affections of the form 
for the substance, of the symbol for the thing sym- 
bolized. The highest human happiness of the hus- 
band consists and is found in supporting, sustaining, 
cherishing, guiding and watching over his wife, from 
love. The highest human joy of the wife consists 
and is found in pleasing her husband from love. 
This is the symbol. But it is inadequate also. The 
love of God for man in his innocence, infinitely 
transcends all this. For the marriage union is tem- 
porary and dissolved at death. But the union be- 
tween God and his children survives the dissolution 
of the earthly nature, and is eternal. Marriage is 
dissolved during this life by one offence. But God 
represents himself as forgiving and passing over 
even this, out of the fulness of his love for the 
espoused soul. 

By many others, but especially by these powerful 
symbols, erected in the bosom of daily life, which 
are universal, and must continue while man con- 
tinues to exist upon the earth, has the Father and 
Husband of the human spirit brought near to us, 
and embodied before our eyes, to reflect it steadily 



OP MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 97 

into our hearts, that which all words, all figures, all 
symbols do utterly fail to describe ; which all ideas 
must for ever fail to reach and comprehend, that love 
wherewith he has loved us, and that which once 
reigned in man's heart towards him. These rela- 
tions are therefore, once and for ever, hallowed by 
the truth which they are constituted to symbolize 
and reflect. No child should ever be brought up 
without being imbreathed with the knowledge of the 
holy symbolical character of the relation which he 
bears to his parents. No marriage should ever be 
solemnized where its symbolical character is not re- 
cognised ; for this only can hallow it. 

To have any idea and feeling therefore of the re- 
lation between God and the first human pair in their 
innocence, through which all their happiness was 
derived from him into their souls, we must behold 
him sustaining them, guiding them, watching over 
and protecting them, communing with them from 
within and without, reflecting himself in them, in 
love — a love more tender and faithful than that of 
father and mother and husband all in one. We 
must behold them hanging upon him with the con- 
scious dependence and instinctive faith of a little 
child upon its parents ; drawing the food of their 
spirits from his perfections, as the infant draws its 
nourishment with exquisite enjoyment from the bo- 
som of its mother — we must behold them recognis- 
ing his voice from within and without, which made 
known his oracles of distinction between good and 
evil, marking the good as right, and stigmatizing the 
5 



98 OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 

evil as wrong — we must behold them reflecting his 
distinctions between good and evil ; feeling them- 
selves to be sustained, watched over and protected, 
guided, and communed with in love, with a love in re- 
turn more tender and blissful than that of the good 
child for its father and mother ; than that of the 
faithful and affectionate wife for her husband, both 
in one. 

Hail to the new- wedded pair ! Blessings upon 
the first human children of God ! To whom it is 
given to behold the beauty of the picture which God 
has placed before us of their innocence and felicity, 
to feel its transcendent power, his soul is awed and 
subdued ; his heart kindles and glows ; but he can- 
not tell what he sees. 

Here in Paradise, in the garden of delight, the 
race of man passed its innocent and happy, but alas ! 
its brief and fleeting infancy. To this period it still 
looks back with fond and tender regret. The litera- 
ture of the first ages, among all nations, retains the 
tradition of a golden age,^ when sin and sorrow were 

* " First rose an age of Gold, of its free choice. 

No judge, no law, revering right and truth. 

Fears, penalties were not. No threatening words, 

Graved on the public tablet, yet were read. 

No suppliant crowd before the avenger's face 

Trembled ; but free from harm and safe were all. 

Unscathed, nor dragged down to the liquid waves 

To visit foreign shores, the ancient pine 

Upon his native mountains stood secure : 

Nor mortals knew of coasts beyond their own. 

No trenches steep girded defended towns. 

Horns of curved brass and trumpets straight were not ; 



OF MAN IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. 99 

as yet unknown. Dimmed and obscured indeed it 
has been by time, but it could not be blotted out. 
It is with the human race as with each individual. 
For it is with fond and tender regret that we bear 
in our hearts the memory of our childhood ; of those 
years of simplicity and love and happiness which 
we spent under the guardianship and guidance of 
our parents, hanging upon them in conscious de- 
pendence and implicit faith, and nourished by their 
providence and love. In the midst of the turmoil 
of after life, forgetful of the curse of shame and toil 
and sorrow and death, how often do we pause while 
a father's blessing or a mother's kiss comes back 
upon us like the vision of a lost paradise ! And man 
himself, in the feeling of that unutterable craving, 
which sends him forth under the guidance of his 
own wisdom upon an ever-fruitless quest, carries 
with him into every portion of the earth, and down 
through the ages of time, the painful memento of his 
lost innocence and happiness. 

Helmet, nor sword. Unskilled in deeds of arms. 
Secure the nations passed their happy years. 
Unwounded by the plough or iron teeth, 
Of her own will earth gave her various fruits. 
Content with simple food, with relish keen. 
Nutritious fruits from hedge and tree and field, 
Man plucked and ate, by luxury undefiled. 
Fresh bloomed eternal spring ; and Zephyrs warm 
Caressed the flowers born of the seedless earth, 
Untilled, nor heavy with the bearded grain. 
Rivers of milk, rivers of nectar flowed. 
And yellow honey from the oak distilled." 

Ovid, I., Met. iii. 



100 OF THE SUBTLETY OF THE SERPENT. 



CHAPTER IX. 

OF THE SUBTLETY OF THE SERPENT. 

" Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field 
which Jehovah God had made." 

The symbolical character of this account of the 
temptation of man by the serpent breaks out with 
such clearness and power that it has forced itself to 
be recognised by all, even by those who most ear- 
nestly insist upon the narrative as historical. In all 
ages it has been discerned that what is here, and 
hereafter, spoken of the serpent is intended to apply, 
not to the reptile alone, but also to Satan, the spiritual 
tempter and adversary of man. Yet it is nowhere 
in the Word of God declared that there was any 
spiritual power concerned in this matter ; much less 
that the Devil had any hand in it. Even in the New 
Testament, where the subject is mentioned, it is still 
the serpent that beguiled Eve. 

But the whole tenor of Scripture seems to imply 
that it was Satan who, under the form of the serpent, 
here seduced the human race from its simplicity and 
innocence. For the name Satan signifies adversary ; 
and the supposition that it was he who first set him- 
self to destroy the well-being of man gives applica- 



OF THE SUBTLETY OF THE SERPENT. 101 

tion and appropriateness to this name. He is de- 
clared by the Lord to be a har, the father of Ues, and 
a murderer from the beginning ; as if he had been 
the inventor of that original lie by which was accom- 
plished the murder of man in soul and body. He is 
also called the Devil, that is to say, the slanderer; as 
if he had been the originator of that horrible slander 
which, as we shall hereafter see, is contained in the 
words, God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof^ 
ye shall he as Gods, knowing good and evil. Every- 
where in the Scriptures Satan is the tempter of man 
by eminence. He tempted Job, Judas, Ananias and 
Elymas, with many others. He tempted Christ the 
second Adam. St. John expressly calls him the 
dragon, that old serpent, that is the devil, as if to 
identify him with the serpent here mentioned. It 
seems to be in allusion to the curse hereafter pro- 
nounced upon the serpent that St. Paul encourages 
the disciples in the words. The God of peace shall 
bruise Satan under your feet shortly. From these 
and many other passages, the Church in all ages, 
both Jewish and Christian, has uniformly held to one 
faith upon this point, that it is Satan who is here de- 
scribed under the form and symbol of the serpent as 
the tempter of man. 

It is not to be inferred from the curse hereafter 
pronounced upon this reptile, upon thy belly shalt 
thou go, that its form was different before it became 
the instrument of the Devil in the temptation from 
that in which we now behold it. For most certainly 
this curse was not for the punishment of the creature, 



102 



OF THE SUBTLETY OF THE SERPENT. 



but for the instruction of man. Also the curse of 
subjection was pronounced upon the woman as a 
punishment for her sin, although as we have seen, 
she was to be subject to her husband from, and in 
virtue of, her creation. We may understand there- 
fore, that it was the serpent as we now behold it into 
which the spiritual adversary of man entered to de- 
ceive and ruin him. 

From what has been already determined of the 
power of symbols over the heart and life of man ; 
since God hinself assumes a visible representation of 
his attributes in order the more vividly and power- 
fully to impress them upon those to whom he appears, 
and upon all men by his incarnation, it will not seem 
strange that the power of evil, seeking to reflect his 
likeness in man, should also assume a visible form. 
Nay, according to this view, it would seem indispens- 
able to his success ; otherwise his suggestions would 
have been powerless, as mere ideas are always found 
to be. It would seem therefore that they who find 
an insuperable objection to the historical and literal 
character of this account in the fact that in it a talk- 
ing snake is introduced, have not profoundly consi- 
dered this trait of human nature. Also they do err 
not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. 
For as he, in order to re-instamp his own image upon 
the human soul, assumes that form which best reflects 
it, the form of a man in Christ Jesus, so Satan, in 
seeking to deface and destroy this image, and to fill 
its place with his own likeness, assumed that form in 



OF THE SUBTLETY OF THE SERPENT. 103 

the serpent which best symbohzes and expresses his 
own nature and attributes. 

To this reptile is here ascribed a subtlety above 
every other animal which God had made. In order 
therefore to comprehend the nature of that likeness 
of himself w^hich the adversary sought to reflect in 
the soul of man, in place of the image of God, we 
must inquire and carefully determine what subtlety 
is, as opposed to animal instinct on the one hand, and 
on the other, to true wisdom. 

The operations of mere instinct are to be recog- 
nised by these traits ; They are direct^ and perfect 
without experience, without the foresight of the object 
and end to be obtained by the actions to which they 
prompt, and without any process of reasoning. This 
is evident from examples which fall under the obser- 
vation of all. For when the lamb first applies itself 
to the teat of its mother it is wholly without experi- 
ence ; the data for a process of reasoning are there- 
fore w^anting, if it were capable of such a thing ; and 
all foresight of what is to be obtained by such an act 
before experience must be impossible. That which 
leads it to do this for the first time, as soon as it is 
yeaned, is instinct. The illustration is equally per- 
fect in the case of the human child. It is blind in- 
stinct which teaches it to suck for the first time. 
Also, if the eggs of the sparrow be taken from the 
nest and hatched by artificial means, the young birds, 
kept shut up in their cage from all intercourse with 
their kind, at the proper season, will build their first 
nest, if the material be provided, precisely like that 



104 OF THE SUBTLETY OF THE SERPENT. 

from which they were taken while in the shell. 
Here, as before, experience, a foreseen result, and a 
process of reasoning, are alike impossible. They 
cannot know for what the nest is intended ; they 
cannot have learned the art of building it ; nor can 
they foresee the brood which they are preparing to 
rear. This is that blind yet direct instinct, which, by 
a figure of speech, may be called the conscience of 
the brute, since it is like the conscience of man in 
this that it is direct in its operations, and a guide of 
life, of practical choice between good and evil, which 
is prior to, and independent of, the calculation of the 
results and consequences of actions. This is not the 
subtlety here ascribed to the serpent which made it 
the fit instrument of the malice, and most expressive 
symbol of the character and attributes of the tempter 
of man. 

For there is in animals a kind of wisdom which is 
very different from this, which is neither blind nor 
direct, which is capable of reasoning from experi- 
ence in foresight of an object and end to be obtained. 
This also is evident from facts which every one may 
observe and verify for himself For the hare when 
pursued, instead of flying directly away, turns towards 
the hounds, doubles and redoubles upon the course, 
crosses and recrosses her tracks. This she does to 
confuse the scent. The deer, when close followed, 
takes the water, and swims down the stream as far 
as he can, to throw the dogs off' his trail. These, 
coming down to the water, immediately infer that 
the game must have crossed. They plunge in, 



OF THE SUBTLETY OF THE SERPENT. 105 

and on the other side commence a search up and 
down the stream, m the com^se of which they soon 
find the lost trail. So also the racoon, when hard 
pressed, looks out a tall tree which has been blown 
down into a reclining position, mounts upon it at the 
root where it touches the ground, and runs along the 
trunk to a height beyond which he does not consider 
it safe to jump, then springs as far as he can from the 
tree to the ground, and strikes off in a different direc- 
tion from that which he has hitherto followed. This 
he does to throw the dogs off his track, that he may 
escape while they are seeking to recover it. What 
he has foreseen and calculated upon takes place. 
For when his pursuers come up to the root of the 
tree, the young dogs are utterly at fault. They 
hunt around the root, and up along the tree, but in 
vain. The spring of the game has passed far beyond 
them. But if there be among them an old and sub- 
tle hound, experienced in the hunting of this animal, 
it is not so with him. He knows instantly what has 
been done, for he has been often before deceived by 
the same trick, and he takes his measures accordingly. 
Starting from the point where the scent is lost, he 
fetches a compass wide around the inclining tree, at 
such a distance from it that no spring could have 
reached beyond him ; and before he has returned to 
the same point again of necessity he has found the 
lost trail. As soon as he strikes it he signalizes the 
other dogs with his cry, and the whole pack, giving 
up their own search, follow where he leads. This, 

in the pursuers and the pursued, is craft, cunning, 

5^ 



106 OF THE SUBTLETY OF THE SERPENT. 

subtlety. It has nothing of the directness and sim- 
pHcity of instinct. It manifests as clearly as these 
things can be manifested, a foresight of the object to 
be obtained, a process of reasoning based upon ex- 
perience, and the inference of a practical conclusion. 
If there be any doubt that brutes are capable of all 
this, in higher or lower degrees, the doubt must be 
removed by observation. 

This is the quality here ascribed to the serpent, in 
a degree above that of every other animal. In the 
brute it is not an evil^ but its highest excellence and 
glory, because its nature is of the earth, earthy, and 
incapable of the knowledge of God and spiritual 
things — incapable of immortality. But the word sub- 
tlety when appKed to man is used in a bad sense. 
We do not call him a crafty or cunning or subtle 
man who follows justice and righteousness with fide- 
lity, however prudent he may be. In him this selfish 
and calculating wisdom is governed and subdued by 
the paramount authority of right and wrong ; that is 
to say, his own wisdom is informed with and control- 
led by, the Wisdom of God revealed through his con- 
science. This is true wisdom. 

This subtlety therefore is the nature of the wisdom 
of Satan. It is his own creature wisdom erected 
into independence of, and opposition to the Wisdom 
of God. 

But, in order to comprehend its evil nature in 
him, we must recall what are the necessary conse- 
quences of following it as a law and guide of dis- 
tinction between good and evil, in every creature of 



OF THE SUBTLETY OF THE SERPENT. 107 

God which is destined to immortahty. For since 
the creature cannot foresee the everlasting conse- 
quences of his actions upon himself, nor compre- 
hend the reasons of what God has commanded and 
forbidden, in the first step of following this guide 
he rebels against God. This is his sin. Also of 
necessity he chooses evil for good, because he 
ceases to obey that Wisdom of God which only can 
be a sufficient and unerring guide of practical choice 
between good and evil. The evil which he chooses 
enters into his own nature and defiles and degrades 
it still more and more continually. Thus in place 
of the high and pure and benevolent affections, all 
evil and malignant passions are developed and 
strengthened. Thus subtlety becomes the wisdom 
of enmity. In its highest possible development 
without the guidance of the Wisdom of God, it is 
adequate only to choose, and to accomplish evil, 
both for him who follows it, and for all who are the 
objects of it. 

For, however acute and far-sighted it may be- 
come, it can never rise to infinity, so as to compre- 
hend all the fruit of actions ; and therefore cannot 
guard the creature against the choice of evil for 
himself, while he means only evil for others. This 
wisdom of itself is adequate only to the accomplish- 
ment of immediate objects ; it must overreach itself 
in the end. The more successful it seems for the 
present, the more unsuccessful it afterwards finds 
itself, because the evil which the creature, under its 
guidance, seeks to inflict upon others, returns into 



108 OF THE BUBTLETY OF THE SERPENT. 

himself. The greater its development in opposition 
to the Wisdom of God, that is to say, the more 
powerful it becomes to work its immediate evil ob- 
jects, the deeper does it plunge him who follows it 
into degradation and ruin. Of it this paradox is 
perfectly true, The more far-sighted it becomes, the 
more short-sighted it is. 

Hence it is that, while in the spiritual adversary 
of man (who is here spoken of under the symbol of 
the serpent, the most subtle of all animals), this 
wisdom is developed to its highest perfection, he 
is also the most malignant, degraded and abo- 
minable of all the creatures which Jehovah God 
has made. He is wise only to do evil ; and in that, 
sure to overreach himself. This is evident from all 
his acts as they are recorded in the Scriptures. For 
in his temptation of the first Adam he accomplished 
his immediate evil object, but thereby he placed his 
head under the heel of the seed of the woman, the 
second Adam, to be crushed, which he did not 
mean. When he tempted the patriarch Job, he be- 
came the means of inflicting upon him only that 
suffering and sorrow which the Wisdom of God had 
seen to be indispensable to the perfection of his 
spiritual life, and everlasting well-being. In his 
temptation of Christ he only succeeded in perfecting 
the captain of man's salvation, by the experience of 
his seducing power, in that sympathy with his 
tempted brethren which was necessary in him in 
order that he might deliver them out of the power 
of the devil. Even in his greatest achievement 



OF THE SUBTLETY OF THE SERPENT. 109 

upon earth, when he tempted Judas to betray, and 
the Jews to crucify the Lord of Glory, in which he 
aimed at the perdition of the Redeemer, and of the 
race which he came to save, he succeeded only in 
exalting the man Jesus above every creature, and 
laid that only foundation-stone of the salvation of 
the human race which could be laid, which is Christ 
crucified. By his own act he destroyed his own 
power, and plunged himself into the abyss of hell. 

Now, as we have seen, in order that man should 
remain in the estate in which he was created, it was 
necessary that this calculating wisdom in him, 
which depended for its practical conclusions upon 
the foresight of the object to be obtained, and upon 
processes of reasoning, should be held in perfect 
and implicit subjection to the Wisdom of God re- 
vealed in the form of authority through the con- 
science. Upon this perfect subordination, his spi- 
ritual life and well-being depended. Therefore, in 
seeking his ruin, the adversary must try to induce 
him to throw off, to rebel against this authoritative 
Wisdom of God as the guide of his life, and to adopt 
in its place his own insight and prudence as the law 
of distinction between good and evil. In other 
words, he must tempt man to choose between good 
and evil by his own wisdom rather than according 
to the Wisdom of God. Therefore he chose as the 
instrument of his temptation the serpent, in which 
this subtlety was higher and more perfect than in 
any other creature, that by means of it he might 
reflect his own likeness of subtlety in the place of 



110 OF THE SUBTLETY OF THE SERPENT. 

that image of God, which consisted in the perfect 
reflection in the soul of man of God's distinctions 
between good and evil. 

After what manner he accomplished this, we must 
now inquire. 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. Ill 



CHAPTER X. 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. 



" And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat 
of every tree of the garden ? And the woman said unto the ser- 
pent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of 
the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath 
said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 
And the serpent said to the woman. Ye shall not die at all. For 
God doth know that in the day that ye eat thereof, your eyes shall 
be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And 
when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and plea- 
sant to the eye, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she 
took of the fruit thereof, and did eat ; and gave also to her hus- 
band with her, and he did eat." 

How long man continued in the estate of innocence, 
we know not. But sooner or later a change passed 
upon him, most sad and disastrous for all who are 
born in his likeness. Seduced by the powerful temp- 
tation of the enemy of all righteousness^ he rebelled 
against the authority of the Wisdom of God, and set 
up his own wisdom in its place. Thus he transgressed 
the law of his life, and plunged himself into shame 
and toil and sorrow and death. We must now tear 
ourselves away from the contemplation of his blessed 
innocence, and behold him in the act of his sin, here 
recorded and described that it may be known what 



112 OP THE SIN OF MAN. 

that terrible evil is which has invaded and ravaged 
the life of humanity. 

In order the better to understand this account, we 
must carefully observe that the words of the serpent 
took effect in the woman, and excited in her the feel- 
ings and thoughts which they describe. This is evi- 
dent from the fact that he succeeded in the tempta- 
tion. By his subtle power he spoke * his words into 
her, so that they, no less than her own expressions, 
must be taken as truly descriptive of that which, in 
the substance of it, passed within her heart and mind. 

First then in the temptation is the questioning of 
the command of God. Yea, hath God said, ye shall 
not eat of every tree of the garden ? This suggestion 
of the tempter entered into the woman, and became 
questioning in her. 

This was the beginning of the bosom sin which 
was perfected and manifested in act when they ate 
of the fruit of the forbidden tree. For he that, before 
obeying, has once questioned a command of God, has 
already sinned against it. It matters nothing in re- 
spect to what in the command this questioning ap- 
plies. It may have slipped from the memory so 
as to leave an uncertainty whether it has ever come 
from God. But this is sin ; for, in that the command 
has been given by God, it is the thing which ought to 

* The old serpent deceived our race and poisoned its root, by that 
weU chosen temptation, addressed to our first parents ** Ye shaU be 
as gods, knowing good and evil." He seems to have spoken the 
w^ord into their very souls, so that it became a part of their being. — 
Erskine, on the freeness of the Gospel. Essay III. 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. 113 

be remembered, as having come from him, whatever 
else may be forgotten. Or this questioning may ap- 
ply to the meaning of the command, arising from 
doubt whether it has been rightly apprehended 
or not ; and this is sin. For when God speaks, 
through the conscience or otherwise, he means to be 
so understood as to lead to immediate obedience. 
Whoever does not so understand him must either 
accuse God of not speaking with sufficient plainness, 
or himself of not hearing as he ought to hear. In 
either case he is convicted of sin. Or it may apply 
to the reasons of the command, as most probably it 
did in this case, since it was immediately followed by 
the outward manifestation of distrust of God's good- 
ness in giving such an injunction. This also is sin. 
Hath God said we shall not eat of this tree ? And 
for what reason has he forbidden it 1 For what rea- 
son has he laid upon us these authoritative prohibi- 
tions? If these things are evil for us, why has he not 
shown us this evil, and in what it consists ? Why 
should we be placed under this authoritative law in 
respect to good and evil, the reasons of whose dis- 
tinctions are veiled in impenetrable mystery ? This 
kind of speculation in man, to determine whether he 
shall obey or disobey, is sin. It is nothing less than 
to cite the Wisdom of God to the bar of man's wis- 
dom, and to require it to give an account of itself. 
But before that inferior tribunal it cannot give a 
satisfactory account of itself. It is impossible for 
man to give to his own rational nature a logical ac- 
count of the reasons upon which God's distinctions 



114 OF THE SIN OF MAN. 

between good and evil are based. God himself can- 
not make man comprehend them, unless he could 
make him to know the difference between good and 
evil in their own natures, and embrace the infinite 
series of the effects and consequences of his actions ; 
that is to say, unless he could make the finite to be 
infinite. The light of the creature is wholly incapa- 
ble of receiving such a revelation as this. Man has 
nothing to do with the reasons and purposes of God 
in giving his commands. He has nothing to do but 
to obey, as soon as the Word of God has come to 
him, without questioning the object or tendency of 
the command, or the motives or reasons with which 
it is given, but in the unwavering faith that it is the 
ordination of infinite wisdom and love ; that in obey- 
ing, it shall be well with him ; he shall live : in dis- 
obeying, it shall not be well with him ; he shall surely 
die. The Word of God, whensoever and howsoever 
it appears in man, speaks with authority, and not as 
the Scribes. It is not amenable to the wisdom of 
man, but man's wisdom is amenable to it. It can be 
satisfied with nothing short of unquestioning, unhesi- 
tating, implicit obedience. 

The reply of the woman to this suggestion of the 
tempter describes the re-affirmation of the command, 
as the authority of the Wisdom of God, revealed 
from without, and affirmed in her conscience. God 
hath said, we shall not eat of it nor touch it lest we 
die. This is all that can be said about it. This re- 
affirmation of itself as the Wisdom and authority 
of God, marking his distinctions between good and 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. 115 

evil, commanding the good with the promise of hfe, 
forbidding the evil upon pain of death, is all that man 
can obtain from his Word, all that he can obtain 
from the conscience, so far as it is truly heard, let 
him question it as much and as urgently as he will. 
The attempt to legitimate God's distinctions between 
good and evil in the eyes of man's inferior wisdom 
must for ever fail, as here it failed. 

For when the woman found that the Wisdom of 
God would render no account of itself at the bar of 
her wisdom, immediately she began to distrust it ; or 
rather, that distrust which was contained in her ques- 
tioning of it, began to take a precise form, and to 
manifest itself openly. The words of the tempter 
entered into her, and reflected the thought and feel- 
ing which they describe. We shall not die at all ; 
for God doth know that in the day that we eat thereof 
we shall become as gods, knowing good and evil. 
These words, it is to be observed, are a manifest proof 
that she was not ignorant that God had reserved the 
knowledge of good and evil to himself. She knew 
that as yet she could not discern between these things 
by her own light and wisdom. God had given her to 
understand that it was impossible ; that it would be 
death for her to aspire after this knowledge which 
was competent to him alone. This was all false ; 
and God knew it to be false when he had said so. 
For here was a tree which, as God knew when he 
prohibited it, had the power to open her eyes, if she 
should eat of its fruit, so that she also could know 
good and evil, and choose between them aright by 



116 OF THE SIN OF MAN. 

her own wisdom and prudence. It would enable her 
to know what God had hidden from her, and falsely 
taught her that he only could know, that he might 
hold her in mental bondage and blind subserviency 
to his will, under a law and guidance which would 
render no reasons for its distinctions, but only thun- 
dered death to its transgressors. Faith in God, the 
only root of obedience, had been plucked up out of 
her heart, and in its place now sprung the poisonous 
growth of unbelief The light of faith, in which 
man sees all things through the wisdom and will of 
God, had gone out, and dark, horrible, godless unbe- 
lief, which throws him back upon the blind guidance 
of his own distinctions between good and evil, had 
entered. And this was its fruit. She accused God 
in her heart of lying to her with malignant intention. 
The earth shuddered ! 

Now the woman raised her eyes to the tree, and 
lo ! it was fair to the eye, and, as it seemed to her, 
its fruit was good for food. Her senses of sight and 
taste were captivated ; and for the gratification of 
her sensual nature, she was ready to reject the author- 
ity of the Wisdom of God over her, and to set at 
naught all the love which he had manifested. But 
above all, this tree was desirable to make her wise. 
In what sense she was not already wise, we have 
seen. She could not know the difference between 
what was good and what evil by her own wisdom, 
the light of her sensual nature, while she had a per- 
fect and infallible guide and criterion of distinction 
between these things in the authoritative Wisdom of 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. 117 

God, the light of her spiritual nature, revealed in her 
conscience. Thrown back now upon the guidance 
of this prudential and calculating wisdom, having 
cast off the authority of the Wisdom of God, inspired 
by her sensual desires, deluded by the devil, led to 
believe that the fruit of the tree would open her eyes 
to know good and evil for herself, she would trust 
herself to her own guidance to eat of this tree. 
What could be so desirable as that she should be de- 
livered from this authoritative guide, which would 
render no account of the reasons of its distinctions, 
and which might lead her to choose the evil, and thus 
to ruin herself before she could be aware ? What 
could be more desirable than that she should have, 
as an unerring guide of life, an intelligent and inde- 
pendent insight into the distinction between good 
and evil ? This once attained, she would have her 
well-being taken from under the watch and care of 
another, and secured ill her own hands for ever. 
The possibility of mistake would be done away. 
For knowing good and evil in herself, she would be 
sure to choose the good and refuse the evil, and to 
guard her own destiny with unerring prudence. 
And, how blessed would it be to have an indepen- 
dent wisdom and will and choice of her own ! She 
would be elevated to know that which she had so 
foolishly thought God only could know. She would 
depend upon another no longer. She would be as 
God. Henceforth she would not be under the ne- 
cessity of walking by faith in another ; she would 
walk by sight, nor yet err from the path of her 



118 OF THE SIN OF MAN. 

own well-being and happiness. She took of the 
tree and did eat. She chose what seemed good 
in her own eyes, instead of what seemed good in 
the eyes of God. The will in her turned its face 
away from the light of the Wisdom of God, and 
consented to the solicitations of her earthly and 
sensual nature. 

The sin of the woman was immediately, through 
her agency, reflected in the man. She gave also to 
her husband with her, and he did eat. In the New 
Testament we are told that Adam was not deceived, 
hut the woman being deceived, was in the transgres- 
sion. This seems to indicate that his understanding 
was not imposed upon by the sophism of the tempt- 
er ; that he did not act upon the supposition that he 
was already able to choose aright between good and 
evil, in order that he might become able hereafter, 
nor expect any such result from eating of the fruit, 
as she had done ; but that he rather disobeyed from 
a greater devotion to his wife than to God. How- 
soever this feeling arose in him, it was, in the sub- 
stance of it, the same sin which she had committed, 
and led to the same outward act. For, in opposition 
to the authority of the Wisdom of God, she had 
hearkened to the appetites, and chosen according to 
the light of the sensual nature. By this nature he 
was united, married to her. He received her sug- 
gestions and followed her guidance, in opposition to 
the authority of the Wisdom of God. He therefore 
followed the solicitations of the earthly nature in 
him, choosing what seemed good to gratify the 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. 119 

affections of this nature, according to its light and 
wisdom, in rebelhon against the authority of the 
Wisdom of God, as she had done. The will in him 
also turned its face away from the light of the spi- 
ritual nature to be guided by the earthly and carnal, 
as it had done in her. 

Thus their sin was consummated in one and the 
same act. Thus man sinned in eating of the for- 
bidden tree. His sin was the aspiration to be as 
God, knowing good and evil. 

In this act, and in the state of heart and mind by 
which it was preceded, and from which it sprung, 
he ceased to believe in the Wisdom of God as the 
only guide of his life. He ceased to believe in the 
sincerity, goodness and love of God. He ceased to 
love God, so as to prefer the will and pleasure of 
God to his own. He ceased to recognise himself as 
but a reflection of God, and to reflect God's dis- 
tinctions between good and evil. He repudiated the 
authority of God over him, and his own subjection 
and dependence. He rebelled against God. He 
charged God with deceiving him. He set up his 
own wisdom, the light of his sensual nature, as the 
criterion of distinction between good and evil. To 
the bar of this wisdom which was created to be 
subject, and to obey, he cited the Wisdom of God, 
and required it to give account of itself. Thus he 
placed himself in his own conceit, not only beside, 
but in the place of God. He said in substance, if 
not in conscious thought, / will he like the Most 
High. And this he did in violation of that love of 



120 OF THE SIN OF MAN. 

God for him which was stronger and more tender 
and faithful than that of father and mother and hus- 
band, all in one. He carried his sin to its greatest 
height of daring, impiety, and malignity, by attack- 
ing, violating, and thus destroying, the most holy 
sacrament and symbol of the truth that he could not 
know good and evil by his own wisdom, but must 
be implicitly submissive and obedient to the guid- 
ance of his heavenly Father, which had been set up 
before him by God's love and watchful providence 
over him, to guard him from sin, and the perdition 
of sin. He sinned as the beloved disciple would 
have done, if, while he leaned upon the bosom of the 
Son of God, instead of receiving the offered bread 
and wine, the sacrament and symbol of the only 
truth by which it was possible for him to be healed 
of his maladies, he had dashed them from the hand 
of his Redeemer and Lord, and trampled them under 
his feet. 

Thus the will in man turned away from the guid- 
ance of the Wisdom of God, yielded to the soHcita- 
tions of the earthly nature, and chose according to its 
light. The will became the will ofthefiesh and the 
mind became the carnal mind, in that evil sense in 
which these expressions are used by St. Paul. This 
mind ofthefiesh now reigned over him, and became 
the law of his life, his criterion of distinction between 
good and evil. If now, by the insights and reason- 
ings and calculations of his own creature wisdom, by 
his own subtlety, he could not give account of the 
grounds and reasons upon which the commands and 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. 121 

prohibitions of the Wisdom of God were based, he 
would not submit to them, nor obey them, but would 
choose what seemed good to himself, rather than 
what seemed good in the eyes of God. If he could 
not see how a thing would be good for him, and what 
good would result from it, he would not choose it, 
simply because it was marked as good by the Wis- 
dom of God, and commanded upon his authority, with 
the sanction, This do, and it shall be well with thee ; 
thou shalt live. If he could not see how a thing 
would be evil for him, and what evil it would pro- 
duce, he would not reject it simply because it was 
stigmatized as evil by the Wisdom of God, and for- 
bidden under the penalty. Doing this, it shall not be 
well with thee ; thou shalt surely die. But because 
he had sinned by his rebellion against the authority 
of the Wisdom and love of God, and thus depraved 
his own nature, vitiated and corrupted his tastes and 
inclinations, that which would now seem good to 
him, must be evil in the eyes of the Holy One, and 
evil for himself By every choice which he should 
make under this guidance he must pierce himself 
through with many sorrows. 

Thus of necessity, by losing faith in God, man sunk 
into illusion — became subject to vanity. Looking at 
all things through that wisdom which gives all its 
practical judgments from the earthly point of view, 
according to the appetites, desires and affections of 
the earthly nature, he beheld only the visible and 
perishable things of time and sense, as things substan- 
tial, and of all importance. He lost the perception 
6 



122 OF THE SIN OF MAN. 

of the shadowy and unreal nature of the phenomena 
of this Hfe. The things which are unseen yet sub- 
stantial and eternal, the spiritual, become dim and 
shadowy and uncertain in his eyes. He was bap- 
tized with a lie — into the name and likeness of the 
father of lies. 

Thus by the aspiration in man to be as God, know- 
ing good and evil, the authority, the guidance, the 
love and the life of God, perished out of his heart. 
Thus perished simplicity, innocence, peace and joy, 
union and communion with God. Thus was spiritual 
death born into life. 

In the account here given by God of the sin of 
man, there is no attempt made at a philosophical ex- 
planation of the matter. It does not profess to ex- 
plain how any influence could have power to lead, 
or to draw Adam into transgression of that law of 
his life which was written upon his heart, and in his 
nature, and symbolized in the most expressive man- 
ner before his eyes. How a holy nature can pass 
out of its original holiness into sin, is a mystery in- 
scrutable to our wisdom. To explain it, we must be 
able to grapple with, and to clear up the long vexed 
question of the origin of evil in the universe. To do 
this, we must be able to comprehend the nature and 
essence of evil, as opposed to good. But to under- 
stand the nature and essence of evil, we must pene- 
trate into the nature and essence of good, that is to 
say, of God, Jehovah, I am that which I am. This 
is impossible to every finite intelligence. For every 
creature, therefore, that God has made, this is an 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. 123 

eternally insoluble problem. The demonstration of 
the impossibility of the quadratm^e of the circle is no 
whit more perfect than that which may be given of 
the insolubility of the question of the origin of evil. 
The only difference is that, by the aid of the symbols 
employed in mathematical reasoning, the logic of the 
one case is more easily mastered than in that of the 
other. Happy are they who are beset with the 
speculative mind, when they learn this, and cease to 
vex a question by which they must be eternally baf- 
fled. 

But here is portrayed as in a diagram, in a symbol, 
what that is in which the sin of man consists. This 
symbol describes the primary form of all sin, in 
which sin is found as soon as it exists at all. Sin is 
the aspiration to be as God, knowing good and evil. 
This expression however, is not limited here to sig- 
nify a conscious affection and a defined process of 
thought, and a preference in act of man's own will 
before the will of God. For the eflfect of Adam's 
first sin entered into himself, and depraved his own 
nature, into the likeness of the sin which he had com- 
mitted, which was the aspiration to be as God, know- 
ing good and evil. His children were born in his 
evil likeness, after his sin, and not before. Therefore 
they are born with a nature out of which springs the 
preference of their own wills, or of what seems 
good to themselves, before what seems good in the 
eyes of God, as necessarily as the poison springs 
under the tongue of the viper. This expression, the 
aspiration to he as God knowing good and evil, is 



124 OF THE SIN OF MAN. 

here used to describe that corruption of the most in- 
ward and spiritual nature of man, which is behind all 
his affections, all his thoughts, and all his actions, and 
from which they all spring. And this corruption of 
his nature, derived from his first sin, consists in this 
very thing, and in nothing else, that his nature contains 
in itself the substance and root and principle of that 
which in form, in growth, in development, becomes 
in conscious affection, in defined process of thought, 
the active preference of what seems good to himself 
before that which seems good in the eyes of God. 
But this is to feel and act and live in the character of 
a god, in the assumption that he can know the dif- 
ference between good and evil, of himself, and by 
his own wisdom. 

Without this, in the substance of it, there can be 
no sin. The expression of immaculate perfection in 
man is. Not my will, but thine be done, or in other 
words, not what seems good to me, but what seems 
good to thee, O Father. Higher than this in holiness 
the creature cannot rise ; as he cannot sink lower in 
sin, than to prefer his own will to the will of God. 

Because this is the evil that is in man, when the 
Word and Wisdom of God is manifested in the flesh, 
to take away sin, he comes as the object of faith. 
This preference in man of what seems good to him- 
self before what seems good to God, is the want of 
faith in God : hence, all sin is reduced in the New 
Testament to unbelief What shall we do that we 
may work the works of God ? This is the work of 
God, that ye believe on him whom God hath sent. 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. 125 

The faith of the gospel is the renunciation from the 
heart of man's own wisdom and will and pleasm^e, 
of what seems good in his own eyes, and the adop- 
tion into their place of the Wisdom and will and 
pleasm^e of God, of what seems good in his eyes. 
In Jesus of Nazareth dwelt all the fulness of the 
Godhead bodily. He who truly believes in him, re- 
ceives him as the supreme Lord of man's heart and 
conscience. By his faith or confidence in him, man 
is perfectly sure that what he has declared is the 
truth ; that what he has commanded are the good 
things ; and what he has forbidden the evil things. 
He no longer judges according to the appearance ; 
that is to say, he does not believe that things are as 
they might appear to himself, but he believes they 
are as they are represented by Christ. By believing 
in him he recognises the truth that his own wisdom 
is folly ; and becomes truly wise by receiving the 
wisdom of God in its place. That is in him which 
is commanded in the words. If any man thinketh him- 
self to he wise, let him become a fool that he may he 
wise. This he does more or less perfectly according 
to the measure of his faith. When his faith is per- 
fected, that is true of him which is declared by the 
prophet, in the name of Jehovah, of the man Christ 
Jesus : Who is hlind as my servant ? or deaf as my 
messenger that I sent ? Who is hlind as he that is 
perfect ; and hlind as JehovaKs servant ? . . . He 
shall not judge after the sight of his own eyes, nor 
reprove after the hearing of his own ears. 

This is the original sin of man. The human race 



126 OF THE SIN OF MAN. 

have but carried out and developed that which was 
begun by the father and head and type of man. 
The aspiration to be as God, knowing good and evil 
is the evil, which has destroyed the well-being of 
humanity. This is what is the matter with man : 
and this shall continue to be the matter with him, 
until he shall be made to know that he is not a God, 
but a blind worm ; that he cannot know good and 
evil by his own wisdom, but must be, in every feel- 
ing, choice and act, dependent upon, and implicitly 
subject to, the Word and Wisdom of God. When 
he shall come to look at all things, so to speak, 
through the eyes of Christ, to prefer what seems 
good to God, before what seems good in his own 
eyes, then, and not before, shall he find the eternal 
well-being of his soul. 

We must now turn our attention to the inquiry, 
after what manner this evil likeness of Adam in 
which his posterity are born, is developed into life, 
strength and activity. 

Much has been written upon the connection be- 
tween Adam and his posterity, to vindicate the 
justice of God in that, under his government and 
providence, they are found to be involved in the ori- 
ginal sin, and its terrible consequences. Perhaps 
however, the most important thing for us to do, is 
not to prove that God is just, nor to 

" Justify the ways of God to man ;" 

but to take knowledge of the fact, which is therefore 
stated because it is the thing to be known, that the 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. 127 

children of Adam were born in his likeness after he 
had sinned, and lost his spiritual life. To this point 
St. Paul confines himself, without any attempt to 
show, that the view which he takes does not com- 
promit the justice of God. He knew that man 
cannot scrutinize God ; that what God does is the 
standard of justice, by which all om' ideas of it are 
to be tried and corrected, but which cannot be 
brought to the bar of any judging power in us. 

It would seem, however, to us exceedingly strange 
if we should hear that a bloodthirsty lioness had 
brought forth a gentle and timid lamb ; that a dove 
had been hatched from an eagle's egg. No less 
wonderful would it seem if the children of Adam 
had not been born in his likeness. It is not therefore 
wonderful that they do inherit from him something 
which is the ground and principle of the invariable 
course of their lives ; which naturally grows with 
their growth, and strengthens with their strength ; 
which is in its own nature evil, and corrupt and ac- 
cursed, as that in him of which it is the likeness, 
was evil, corrupt and accursed. 

As we have seen, however, there is in the earhest 
infancy of the child a most striking and beautiful 
similitude of innocence. The Adam in him is yet in 
abeyance. He knows not that there is any God, 
nor any right and wrong. He ha<.ngs with implicit 
faith and dependence upon his parents. For awhile 
his own choice and will are so weak that he feels 
himself to be wholly dependent. He has not yet 
undertaken to discern between good and evil by his 



128 OF THE SIN OF MAN. 

own light and wisdom. He has not yet voluntarily, 
and by his own act, eaten of the tree of the know- 
ledge of good and evil. Death is in him, it is true, 
by reason of the inherited evil, but it has not yet 
been awakened into life and strength and activity by 
occasion of the exercise of authority over him. 
The commandment has not yet come to him ; there- 
fore the work of death is not finished in him. He is 
one of those over whom death reigns, although he 
has not yet sinned after the similitude of Adam's 
transgression^ by rebellion against a known law. 
He is one of those described by the words of St. 
Paul, / was alive once without the law. When the 
commandment came sin revived and I died. But 
when the commandment shall come to him, the sin 
that is in him shall awaken into life, and finish its 
work of death. But now in the most charming 
similitude of innocence, free from shame, toil and 
sorrow, he dwells in his garden of paradise. His 
food stands ready prepared to his hand by the wis- 
dom and providence and love of his parents. The 
world of nature blooms out to his opening sense, 
with surpassing beauty and charm. Every sense is 
filled and delighted. And even after the evil has 
manifestly begun to work, it is long before it can 
wholly deface and destroy the simplicity and beauty 
of infancy. Blessed be childhood ! It is a holy 
symboL 

But the child has that within him which soon, 
alas ! begins to manifest itself as a wisdom and 
choice and will of his own. He begins in his mind 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. 129 

to question the wisdom of his parents as the law of 
his choice between good and evil ; and to prefer his 
own will to theirs. Unconsciously first, and con- 
sciously afterwards, his questionings arise. Is not 
this food, this amusement, as good as that, and as 
much to be desired to give him pleasure ? Why 
then should the one be allowed, and the other for- 
bidden ? As soon as he thinks about the matter at 
all, it seems to him, because he cannot know what 
his parents know of good and evil, that their dis- 
tinctions between these things, as expressed in their 
directions and commands, are not based upon good 
and sufficient reasons. For, because he cannot see 
so far as they do, nor comprehend the consequences 
of his acts to himself so well as they can, he cannot 
feel the force of their reasons, even though they 
should explain the matter to him as fully as it is 
possible to do. He has now questioned the wisdom 
of the authority of his parents over him, where he 
ought simply to have obeyed, and has therefore 
sinned against it. 

Here the parent ought simply, kindly and deliber- 
ately to reaffirm the command with the penalty of 
disobedience ; but by no means to attempt any ex- 
planation of the reasons upon which that command 
is based. The Wisdom of God could give no ex- 
planation of its reasons to man when he questioned 
it. God hath said that in the day that ye eat thereof 
ye shall surely die. If this course be taken with the 
child, and yet his native tendencies be left to de- 
velope themselves, it seems to him a harsh thing that 
6* 



130 OF THE SIN OP MAN. 

he should be held under an authority so seemingly 
arbitrary that it will not condescend to justify itself 
in his eyes. Now he is ready to distrust the good- 
ness and love of his parents towards him, in exerting 
such an authority. It seems to him as if they could 
not be moved wholly by feelings of kindness when 
they command him to do, or not to do, things in re- 
spect to which he can see no good reason for such a 
distinction. He is now ready to impute to them the 
most unworthy motives and feelings. They love to 
govern him ; or they take a pleasure in making him 
do what he does not desire to do. They do not con- 
sult his pleasure, nor, as far as he can see, his well- 
being. Is not this thing innocent ? He can see no 
harm in it. Is it not good to give him pleasure ? 
What good motive can they have for depriving him 
of so much happiness ? Surely they do not care for 
his happiness or they would not forbid him these 
things. Thus it was that the woman lost her con- 
fidence in the good intentions of God, the loss of 
which is expressed in the words, God doth know that 
in the day that ye eat thereof ye shall he as gods, 
knowing good and evil. 

Let it not be supposed that these thoughts and 
feelings are too refined and subtle for a child. For 
although they may not come out into full conscious- 
ness, nor be followed step by step as here presented, 
yet the substance of all this must be in the child 
before he can proceed to an outward act of disobe- 
dience. Often the whole of it takes place without 
consciousness, suddenly as the lightning's flash. 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. 131 

Now, the desires, appetites, and passions of the 
earthly nature in the child are full and strong before 
there is anything in force to counteract them. He 
feels the powerful solicitations of sense before he has 
any knowledge of spiritual things. Now it is that 
the wisdom and authority of his parents to choose 
for him, stands in the place of the Wisdom of God, 
hereafter to be revealed from without and affirmed 
within him. His subjection to his parents is to pre- 
pare him for subjection to God, when he shall come 
to know that there is a God who has authority over 
him. If he be not restrained by them, he must 
choose amiss, according to his own wisdom rather 
than according to theirs. His rebellion must go into 
outward act, and he must pierce himself through with 
deadly sorrows. Thus he is already prepared for 
rebellion against God, as soon as his commandment 
shall be made known. 

This is the terrible significancy of disobedience to 
parents. For this reason it is placed side by side 
in the Word of God with murder, and the most 
malignant forms of sin. It is rebellion against God 
in germ. It is atheism in its first stage of develop- 
ment. It is the first movement of the sin of Adam. 
It is the erecting of the child's own wisdom, as a 
guide of choice between good and evil, into that 
place which ought now to be filled with the wisdom 
and authority of the parents, and which is hereafter 
to be filled with the authority of the Wisdom of God. 
In it the child has already begun to sin after the simi- 



132 OF THE SIN OF MAN. 

litude of AdanCs transgression^ before he knows that 
there is any God against whom he can sin. 

Long before this has ended however, a new law 
has made its appearance. This is the law of God, 
as given in his Word, and which reaches the soul 
through the conscience. This law, which in its 
nature and authority is intended to be prefigured and 
Ushered in by the parental law, now comes to the 
child commanding this, and forbidding that, with the 
voice of absolute authority, without any explanation 
of the grounds and reasons upon which its distinc- 
tions are based, because these reasons man cannot 
comprehend nor feel their force, if they should be 
stated. This do and thou shalt live ; disobey, and 
thou shalt surely die. Whence is this new law, and 
whence this absolute authority over him who has 
already cast off law, and rebelled against authority ? 
He does not believe in the law of God as the law of 
wisdom for him. He has no faith that the things 
which it commands are the good things for him ; 
nor that what it forbids is evil for him, in its own 
nature ; because he cannot know the essential differ- 
ence between good and evil, nor comprehend the 
everlasting consequences of his actions upon himself 
It seems to him all arbitrary, without sufficient rea- 
son. He is already in the preference of his own 
wisdom and will in the choice between good and evil. 
That in him which has already asserted for itself 
independence of the wisdom and authority of his 
parents, now asserts for itself independence of the 
Wisdom and authority of God. Neither shall he die 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. 133 

at all. He will choose by his own wisdom. He 
will know good and evil for himself; that which 
God only can know and mark aright. He will be as 
God in this thing. Ye shall be as gods knowing 
good and evil. The same thing has now taken place 
in respect to God and his law, which he has been 
passing through before in respect to his parents and 
their law, only after a more spiritual and deadly 
manner. Consciously or unconsciously, in spirit if 
not in thought, in substance if not in the form here 
described, all this must precede, or lie at the bottom 
of every outward act of transgression of the law of 
God, after it is made known. 

Still more spiritual and deadly does all this become 
when the profound spirituality of the law of God is 
revealed to him, who has now become a youth or a 
man, as it was made known to Paul. When he 
learns that this law not only forbids outward acts ; 
but extends also to the appetites, desires and affec- 
tions ; to the secret thoughts of his mind ; to the dis- 
positions and states of his spiritual nature, forbidding 
what he has long felt, and now loves to feel, to which 
he is now in bondage, under the most horrid penal- 
ties, the fire that is never quenched^ and the worm that 
never dies, eternal death — then it seems to him that 
God deals with him in the most arbitrary, tyrannical 
and cruel manner. To his view God is a pitiless and 
ferocious monster. What ! has he given me these 
desires, and will he damn me because they burn ? 
Has he given me reason, and forbidden me to use it ? 
He has forbidden thoughts and feelings over which I 



134 OF THE SIN OF MAM. 

have no control. He tells me to have faith and love 
towards him ; and is faith and love in my own power? 
The carnal mind which is enmity against God, now 
W3rks within him. He hates God with a perfect 
hatred. He would dethrone God if he could. The 
commandment has come to him, sin has revived and 
he has died the death in trespasses and in sins. 

This is the natural development of that which is in 
man by birth — the likeness of Adam. The faith of 
Christ, working upon the parents, and through them 
upon their children, does indeed often restrain this 
depraved nature from running out into the excess 
here described. To many, even in Christian lands, 
the law of God never comes with such revelation of 
its spirituality and power as to call into conscious 
activity this terrible hatred against God, its author. 
The heathen also, are almost entirely without this 
law, except so far as an uncertain echo of it may be 
heard in their consciences. But the principle of all 
this, waiting only the occasion of development, that 
is to say, the coming of the law, is born with every 
child of Adam. Therefore death reigns even over 
those who knew not the law of God, and have not 
sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression. 

The development of this evil likeness of Adam, in 
thousands of cases, is facilitated and hastened, rather 
than restrained, by the treatment which children re- 
ceive from their parents, who have inherited the 
same evil, and in whom it has been developed and 
perfected by the bringing-up which they have re- 
ceived. For while the physical necessities of the 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. 135 

child cause him to hang upon his parents in conscious 
dependence for everything, it is intended that he 
should be imbreathed with their love. As his facul- 
ties open, he is to be filled with faith in their wisdom, 
and with reverence for their authority. By every 
possible means he should be imbued with the convic- 
tion and feeling, that his own wisdom is a guide 
wholly inadequate to lead him aright ; that following 
it he must choose amiss, and destroy himself ; that he 
must be for ever implicitly submissive to a voice and 
an authority above him, the reasons of whose com- 
mands he can never comprehend, whose wisdom and 
love he is never once to question, but to obey ; and 
that thus only it can be well with him ; he shall live. 
He is to be trained in the obedience of faith and love 
and reverence, not in that of sight and reasoning. 
The highest reason that can be given for his doing any- 
thing, is that his parents, in their superior wisdom, in 
the fulness of their love, and in the plenitude of their 
authority, have commanded it. No other reason 
should ever be given but that which is implied in the 
command itself The fewest possible injunctions and 
restraints should be laid upon the child. He should 
have the free range of his garden of Paradise. Every 
command of parental authority should be given in 
the fewest and simplest words, with the gentlest 
voice and manner, and for every transgression of a 
positive command, and perhaps for nothing else, the 
chastisement of the rod should be administered with 
all tenderness, but with unswerving fidelity. He that 
spareth his rod hateth his son ; hut he that loveth 



136 OP THE SIN OF MAN. 

him chasteneth him betimes. This is the Wisdom of 
God. And woe to the age which has found out a 
better wisdom for itself than his ! The whole object 
of the authority and government of parents, is that it 
may exactly prefigure, and usher in, that law of God 
which springs from infinite love and incomprehensi- 
ble wisdom. Whatever else it may effect, it is an 
utter failure where it fails to accomplish this. 

Instead of making this the object of his treatment 
of the child, the parent forsooth must appeal to his 
understanding and persuade him to do thus and so. 
He undertakes to argue with the child, and to show 
him the grounds and reasons of what he is requested 
to do ; that he may see it is good to be done, and 
choose it of his own desire. Here he appeals to a 
wholly incompetent authority. For such an appeal 
assumes that, if the matter be fully and properly ex- 
plained, the child is capable of knowing, and choosing 
aright between good and evil. But this is not so. 
He is without the experience through which the 
parent has passed, and by which he has learned all 
that he knows of good and evil. It is therefore im- 
possible for the child to feel the force of reasons 
which are based upon an experience which he has 
not. He is not capable of foreseeing those conse- 
quences of his actions which his parent foresees. 
Hence when the appeal is made to the child's own 
judgment and discrimination to sanction the command 
of his parent, that judgment, if it be honest, must go 
against the choice which he is expected and required 
to make, and in favor of his own desire, according 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. 137 

to what seems good to himself. Now the parent is 
reduced to the necessity, either of allowing the child 
to take his own way, or of flying from the decision 
of that judge to which himself has appealed. In 
either case faith in the wisdom of the parent is de- 
stroyed out of the child. Often the parent is amazed 
at what seems to him the perverseness or sttipidity 
of the child, because, after the matter has been all 
explained, still he is not at all convinced, but desires 
to do what has been forbidden as much as before. 
He does not know, he will not consider, that it is im- 
possible for the child to feel the force of his reasons, 
because he is without his experience upon which 
those reasons are based. 

The stupidity is in the parent. Woe to him, and 
to his children, and his children's children, to the 
third and fourth generations, that it is ! By thus 
appealing to the child's own insight and reasoning to 
sanction his commands, he does all in his power to 
erect the child's own wisdom into a guide and law of 
distinction between good and evil. He tells him in 
substance that he is able to discern what is good for 
him and what evil, if he will only think about it and 
consider. Every attempt to reason with the child 
and to persuade him by considerations of the mind, 
to choose this and reject that, instead of guiding him 
by the authority of superior wisdom, is as much as 
to assure him that he is not incapable of knowing 
good and evil. It is precisely the temptation of the 
serpent. Thus the father becomes to his own child the 
professed teacher of Adam's sin, which is the root and 



138 OF THE SIN OF MAN. 

substance of all sin, the cause of all practical mistakes, 
the fountain of all the evils that are in the world. In- 
stead of forbidding to him the knowledge of good and 
evil ; instead of seeking to fill him with the conviction 
that he cannot discern between these things by his own 
wisdom, in thus attempting to reason him into obedi- 
ence, the father leads his child to the fatal tree ; shows 
him its fruit, so fair to the eye, and good for food, so de- 
sirable to make him wise ; assures him that he shall not 
die at all ; invites him to pluck and eat that which con- 
tains the germ of inevitable death to his soul ; which 
expels him from his beautiful paradise of simplicity, 
love and happiness, and sends him forth, under the 
guidance of his own wisdom, under the dominion of 
the carnal mind, into a thorny world, without faith, 
without hope, and without God. Alas ! for the child ! 
He is trained to regard his own wisdom as the law 
to which appeal is to be made in his choice between 
good and evil ; and when the law of God comes, that 
Voice of divine authority, which cannot give its 
reasons for its instructions, it finds him already in 
rebelhon against it. Alas ! for the child. Through 
his parent's sin and folly, he has sinned and fallen 
before he knows that there is any right or wrong, any 
God, any life to come. 

This is now become a system of education and 
training for children — the system of moral suasion. 
It is based wholly upon the wisdom of the serpent. 
Its fruit is death. If it be not checked it will pro- 
duc6 a luxuriance and bloom of infidelity, and ungod- 
liness, such as the earth never beheld. The state of 



OF THE SIN OF MAN. 139 

society will become so lawless that it cannot be borne. 
Well might the Word and Wisdom of God exclaim 
in view of all this (for it was in view of the offences 
which children would receive that the words were 
uttered), Woe unto the world because of offences! 
For thus is lost even the similitude of innocence ; thus 
is blasted the paradise of childhood. 

The memory of Paradise is not more clear in the 
traditions of early ages than is the consciousness of 
the nature of the sin by which it was lost. Accord- 
ing to the account of the Greeks,* man's first sin, was 
the attempt to ascend to heaven to steal the fire and 
the light (the wisdom) of the gods. To punish him 
a woman was created, and endowed with every hu- 
man perfection. Venus gave her beauty, with irre- 
sistible attraction and charm, and filled her heart 
with the desire of pleasing. The god of eloquence 
touched her lips with persuasion. Apollo taught her 
music. Minerva instructed her in all other beautiful 
and useful arts. The Hours and the Graces decked 
her with every winning ornament. Each of the 
other deities conferred upon her some excellent and 
precious gift. Last of all Jupiter placed in her hand 
a mystical casket, and warned her under the most 
terrible penalties, never to break its seal. But over- 
swayed in an evil hour by the desire of forbidden 
knowledge, she opened the fatal casket. When lo !^ 
forth flew from within it the hosts of diseases, cares 
and sorrows which have invaded the human race. 

* Hesiod. Theog: 521. Opera et Dies, 47. 



140 OF THE SIN OF MAN. 

She tried to close it again ; but it was too late. Hope 
alone remained in the bottom. This she carefully 
preserved and handed down to her posterity, now all 
she had to leave them. 

Dimmed and obscured it is ; yet it reflects, with 
no uncertain light, the nature of the original sin. It 
is a far off* echo of the mournful truth, sounding 
across the abysm of ages of sin and toil and sorrow 
and death, not without hope ; tender and touching 
as the wail of the bereaved mother over her dead 
child, in the hope that, though it be dead it shall live 
again. 



OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 



141 



CHAPTER XI. 

OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 

** And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they 
were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made them- 
selves aprons." 

" And they heard the Voice of Jehovah God walking in the garden, 
in the cool of the day : and Adam and his wife hid themselves 
from the presence of Jehovah God in the midst of the trees 
of the garden. And Jehovah God called unto Adam, and 
said. Where art thou ? And he said, I heard thy Voice in the 
garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself. 
And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked ? Hast thou 
eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest 
not eat ? And the man said. The woman whom thou gavest to 
be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And Jehovah 
God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done ? 
And the woman said. The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." 

Hitherto both the man and his wife had been 
naked yet without shame. There was nothing within 
them, in their spiritual nature, of which they had 
need to be ashamed in the presence of God and of 
each other, therefore nothing without in their bodies 
desired to be covered. SimpUcity, innocence is 
naked. 

But now in the consciousness of their sin they were 
ashamed and afraid ; and they sought to cover their 
naked bodies, to hide themselves from the presence 
of God, and to excuse themselves for what they had 



142 



OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 



done. But here the question arises, What connexion 
can the shame of the naked body have with sin? 
What could there be in the sin of the first man to 
suggest or awaken shame of his nakedness, when this 
feehng had been before utterly unknown? In order 
that we may have the more intelligent view of this 
subject, we must observe that there are two feelings 
which are called shame, in human speech. The one 
is, so to speak, an outward and physical shame which 
leads us, as it led the first man, to cover our naked 
bodies. The other feeling is one more inward and 
spiritual. It is the shame of remorse or conscious 
degradation. The feeling which a man has when 
detected in a sinful and disreputable act is called 
shame, no less than that which leads him to cover 
his naked body. This inward and spiritual shame 
of conscious sin, when it arose in the heart of man, 
was, of course, a new feeling, and demanded some 
new outward expression or manifestation. For, as 
we have already seen, there is in the very nature of 
man a necessity that whatever is living and power- 
fully moving in him, should seek and find some out- 
ward manifestation, into which it may go forth and 
symbolize itself: otherwise the feeling must perish 
out of his heart. But the conscience of sin was now 
in man a legitimate feeling ; one that needed to be 
nourished and kept alive, because upon it depended 
his salvation. If it should perish, if he should sink 
down into that state in which he should be no more 
sensible of his sin, and ashamed before God, it would 
be impossible to renew him again to repentance. 



OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 143 

For it is only through the conviction of sin that man 
is saved from it by the gospel. 

Hence, in the earthly nature of man, by v^hose 
solicitations, and following v^hose wisdom, he had 
been betrayed into sin, was immediately reflected 
the shame of his degraded spiritual nature. The 
sight of his naked body, the embodiment of his sen- 
sual nature, by which he had been seduced, became 
odious to him because it reflected back upon him the 
nature of his sin, and made its consciousness and 
conviction the more painful. The shame which he 
felt for his sin and folly went forth and attached 
itself to the outward form of the nature by which he 
had been led into transgression. 

This is not fancy. It is what always takes place 
in like circumstances. The feeling which we have 
towards any act of our lives goes forth, by a law of 
our nature, and attaches itself to the instrument by 
which the act has been performed. A single instance 
will serve to illustrate the truth of this. When the 
Archbishop Cranmer was brought to the stake, there 
was one act of his life for which he felt unuttera- 
ble abhorrence. In a moment of fear and temptation 
he had formerly signed a recantation of those very 
doctrines for which he was now about to suffer. The 
feeling which he now had towards that act went forth 
and attached itself to the hand with which it had 
been committed. Therefore he thrust it into the 
flames, and held it until it was consumed, exclaiming, 
Let this hand which sinned, first suffer. 

Also, hitherto the nakedness of man's body had 



144 OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 

been the symbol of his innocence ; that he had no- 
thing within which needed to be covered from the eye 
of God. But now that he was polluted and defiled 
in his spiritual nature, and ashamed in the presence 
of God, the sight of the symbol of his former inno- 
cence, which was lost for ever, must awaken the 
most painful feelings. For whatever calls vividly to 
mind the memory of that which was formerly dear, 
but now lost through our own sin and folly, is odious 
to our sight. Therefore the man and his wife, to 
relieve this pain, sought to cover their naked bodies 
from their own eyes, and from the eye of God. 

Why this inward and spiritual shame of sin attached 
itself particularly to those parts of the body which an 
apron or girdle would cover, is to be understood from 
the fact that in them is the whole force of the sensual 
nature summed up and concentrated. They are 
always treated in the Scriptures as the type of the 
sensual nature, by which man was seduced into sin. 
For this reason the evil that is in man is described 
by the words carnality, carnal mind, the flesh, concu- 
piscence, adultery, and by the like expressions. Be- 
cause these parts are the type of the whole sensual 
nature, the sins of gluttony, drunkenness, and other 
evil indulgences of the appetites, desires and affec- 
tions of this nature, are not forbidden by name in the 
law delivered from Mount Sinai. That in man in 
which the whole force of this nature is summed up 
and concentrated, is selected as the type of the whole, 
and the prohibition laid upon it. These are all for- 
bidden in type under the one command. Thou shalt 



OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 145 

not commit adultery. Therefore, when this spiritual 
shame seeking an outward expression, as it must 
needs do, reflected itself in the earthly nature of man, 
it naturally sought out those parts of his body in 
which the strength of that nature was concentrated, 
and by which it most powerfully manifests itself, 
and attached itself most closely, though not exclu- 
sively, to them. 

Thus the feeling which now arose in man's heart 
in respect to his sin, went forth and symbolized itself 
in the shame of his naked body. Thus modesty be- 
came a holy symbol to reflect back into his soul that 
shame which he felt for his sin in the presence of God, 
from which it first arose, and which still remains its 
ground and cause in every man. This feeling is to 
keep ever fresh and living in the heart of man the 
conviction and shame of his sin, that for it he may go 
in mourning and penitence all his days. 

Therefore, in the Word of God, the shame of the 
naked body is continually taken as the symbol of the 
shame of sin. To uncover the shame or nakedness 
of a person, is to discover his sin and folly. Thus the 
prophet Isaiah threatens the Egyptians, that for their 
sin they should be led away captive, stark naked, 
with nothing to cover their shame. So he declares 
to the daughter of Babylon^ Thy nakedness shall he 
uncovered ; yea, thy shame shall he seen. Also Jeho- 
vah declares to Jerusalem, / will discover thy skirts 
upon thy face, that thy shame may appear. The 
force of these expressions is not to be understood and 
felt except from the knowledge of what is set forth in 
7 



146 OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 

this account of the origin of this feehng of the shame 
of the naked body, and of its connection with sin. 

Indeed, the word shame is the proper and scriptu- 
ral word to describe that feehng which naturally 
arises in the soul of man for and from sin. It is to 
be preferred to the heathen word remorse^ because 
this latter, which signifies the biting-back which sin 
inflicts upon the soul, leaves out of view him against 
whom the sin has been committed. But the word 
shame, and the feeling which it describes, implies the 
presence of God before whom the soul is ashamed. 
The heathen knew not against whom they sinned ; 
therefore they referred the pain which arose from 
conscious guilt, to nothing but the sin itself, and called 
it remorse. But they who had this account of the 
significancy of the feeling of shame, and who knew 
against whom they had sinned, could not describe 
the conscience of sin by this word. Therefore they 
cry, O hord God, I am ashamed, and blush to lift up 
my face to thee, my God ; for our iniquities are in- 
creased over our heads, and our trespass is grown 
up unto the heavens. 

According to these views of the significancy of the 
feeling of shame, it is not found in the brute because 
he is of one nature, therefore incapable of sin, there- 
fore again, incapable of shame. Even in the highest 
ranks of mere animals it is utterly unknown. They 
can feel fear, but of shame they give not the slightest 
manifestations. 

Neither is it found in the infant, because, although 
the root of all sin is in him, he has not yet sinned 



OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 147 

after the similitude of Adam^s transgression ; that is 
to say, he has not deUberately and consciously re- 
belled against the clearly enunciated, and fully 
recognised law of God. He has not yet, by a free 
act of his own, elevated the sensual nature with its 
wisdom into the sphere of the conscience, to control 
its judgments in his choice between good and evil. 
The Wisdom and authority of God is not yet mani- 
fested in his conscience. He is as yet ignorant of 
the law of God. Hence he is ignorant of the feeling 
of shame. But when this law of God shall begin to 
enunciate itself in his conscience, and his transgres- 
sion of it shall become precise and conscious, his 
shame of his naked body shall begin to be felt ; for 
not till then does he become capable of the shame 
of sin, of which it is the reflection and divinely ap- 
pointed symbol. But when it happens that the man 
goes on in sin, hardening his heart, and stifling the 
voice of the conscience, until his susceptibility to the 
sense and shame of sin becomes destroyed, he loses 
also, to a great degree, the shame of his naked body. 
Often it perishes altogether. Then man is restrained 
from the open exposure of his person, and from the 
open gratification of his brutal lusts, only by former 
habit, by the customs of society, and by the penal- 
ties of the civil law. He is given over to his own 
hearfs lusts, to work all uncleanness with greediness. 
This is the force of the charge which God brings 
against the nation of the Jews. Thou hast a whore^s 
forehead, and refusest to he ashamed. Hence also, 



148 OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 

to he shameless signifies in common speech, to be 
utterly abandoned. 

Among those nations also which are entirely savage 
and uncultivated, as are many of the African tribes, 
the feeling of shame is w^eak and ill-defined. In 
some it scarcely appears at all, although perhaps 
none are entirely without it. They know not the 
clearly enunciated law of right and wrong. The 
oracle of the Wisdom of God, making known its 
authoritative distinctions between good and evil, 
is scarcely heard by them. The light which has 
shined into their darkness they have utterly failed to 
comprehend. The conscience in them has almost 
entirely ceased to be a medium of communication 
between their souls and God. They do not rebel 
against the clearly recognised law. Their sin after 
the similitude of Adam's transgression is not precise 
and conscious. Therefore in them the sense and 
shame of sin is scarcely felt ; and therefore again, 
its reflection and symbol, the shame of their naked 
bodies is almost unknown. But when the law is 
preached to them, and their conscience of sin is 
awakened into life ; when they recognise themselves 
as transgressors of the law of God, and rebels 
against his authority, their shame is felt, and they 
cover their naked bodies, especially those parts in 
which the strength of the sensual nature is summed 
up and concentrated. 

Hence it is that, when the disposition to uncover 
the body more and more makes its appearance among 
civilized nations who have the clearly enunciated 



OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 149 

law of God revealed from vvrithout and affirmed 
vsrithin, especially among v^omen, it is alw^ays the 
unerring sign and proof of great corruption of 
morals, by vv^hich the sense and shame of sin against 
God, together with that which is the sacred symbol 
of it, ordained of God to keep it ever fresh and 
living in the heart of man, is abolished and destroy- 
ed. Blessed be modesty ! For sinful man it is a 
holy thing. 

But while in Adam, the conviction and shame of 
his sin, with its reflection, the shame of his naked 
body, and the desire to be covered, were now le- 
gitimate feelings, and appropriate to his defiled and 
polluted state, yet the attempt to cover himself, and 
to hide himself from the presence of God, arose from 
a most evil and sinful delusion, of which the girdle 
of fig leaves is the most significant and expressive 
symbol. This delusion is that state of mind in 
which man desires and hopes and attempts to palliate 
and excuse his sin in his own eyes, and in the eyes 
of God. This is a deep, radical, though often un- 
conscious insincerity in man towards himself and 
towards God. It is that which Jesus charges upon 
the Scribes and Pharisees under the word hypocrisy. 
Ye are they who justify yourselves. How can ye 
believe ? It is that which is called in Scripture the 
refuge of lies. To the nature and manifestations of 
this delusion, as it is symbolized and brought out in 
words, in the dialogue that follows between God and 
man, we must now turn our attention. 

When the man and his wife heard the Voice of God 



150 OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LBAVBiBi 

walking in the garden in the cool of dtelds^, tkey at- 
tempted to hide themselves from his{^fees)@iq(3a. ,nThey 
were afraid because they were n^Jted.n^Jg gniiic 

The meaning of the expressi)^,rJ6Mi»«5^;^?;AJ(6e- 
cause I was naked^ is to be undfesi'sjSopxi byrfoogipa^jieon 
with such words as those whi#j^ J^sifeifiigt&ce^s^ejd to 
his disciples when he offered tl^^^j^^y^^ ^foc?i^rfiiental 
bread and wine, saying, This is my ^dy^^^piM^ is my 
blood. The simple nakedness of man was not that 
which made him afraid, and drove him from the pre- 
sence of God. For he had been naked when he most 
rejoiced in that presence. But that shame of his na- 
kedness which he now felt was the symbol of his shame 
of sin, as the bread and the wine are the symbols of 
the body and the blood. That which made him 
ashamed and afraid was the conscience of sin, from 
which the shame of his bodily nakedness arose. This 
it was which led him to attempt to flee and hide him- 
self from the voice of God. 

This is a symbol of universal significance. Thus 
it is with man. For when the pleasure of sin has 
passed, when the tumultuous transports of the sensual 
nature have subsided, in the cool of reflection, man 
hears the Voice of God in the conscience, convicting 
him of sin and folly, and destroying all his peace, 
as Adam heard it in the cool of the day walking in 
the garden. Of this voice he is now afraid because 
it is that of him against whom he has sinned. In its 
presence his shame is discovered. He feels that now 
there is that within him which cannot stand the scru- 
tiny of God, which he would wish to hide from his, 



OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 151 

and from every eye. He tries to flee and hide him- 
self from this presence, as Adam sought to hide him- 
self in the midst of the trees of the garden. For 
this pm'pose, he plunges into the avocations of the 
mortal life, and tries to charm the voice to silence by 
amusements, pleasures and dissipation. He would 
drown it in the turmoil and clamor of this world. 
But he flees and hides himself in vain. The voice 
follows him. It calls him in tones which he is forced 
to hear ; Man where art thou ? In vain he assigns, 
as a reason for hiding himself, that he is naked and 
ashamed and afraid. Who told thee that thou wast 
naked ? Whence came this fear and shame ? The 
necessity itself which he now feels of trying to 
escape from the rebuking voice in his conscience, is 
the evidence and ground of conviction that he has 
sinned. Innocence does not seek to cover nor to 
hide itself. It does not know what shame is, nor 
fear ; because it does not know what sin is. It has 
all boldness and confidence in the presence of the 
justice of God, revealed through the conscience. 

When the Voice of God had reached man in the 
depth of his hiding place, and forced him to acknow- 
ledge the fact of his transgression, then he attempted 
to take refuge in self-deceit, the refuge of lies. He 
would excuse himself by laying the blame of his sin 
upon God and upon his wife. The conviction that 
he had sinned without any excuse or palliation was 
too horrible to be borne, even for a moment. Self- 
ishness had now entered, and taken possession of his 
heart. That act to which he was led by feelings so 



152 OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 

unselfish towards his wife, so generous and self-sacri- 
ficing, as they appeared him, because it was chosen 
in opposition to the Wisdom of God, the only just 
criterion of what is truly generous, has landed him 
in the heart of the most loathsome selfishness 
towards God and his neighbor. Therefore let the 
blame of his sin go anywhere rather than remain 
upon himself Let it rest upon God himself, or upOn 
her for whose love he has not scrupled to transgress 
the law of God. The woman whom thou gavest to be 
with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat. Poor 
girdle of fig leaves ! it cannot hide his nakedness. 
It must be all stripped oflf, and his soul must appear 
naked before God to be judged. 

In all this, and through the whole account, Adam 
speaks and acts in the character of man ; and his 
words and actions are the symbols of universal truth. 
Thus it is here. For thus man continually seeks to 
palliate and excuse his sin by the reasonings and 
devices of the carnal mind. To remove the guilt 
from himself, to silence his conscience of sin, he tries 
with all his might to lay it upon something, or some- 
one else, upon the circumstances in which he was 
born and brought up, upon his forefathers, upon his 
corrupt nature, upon the strength of his temptations, 
and upon a thousand other things. Thus he seeks to 
cover his sin from himself and from the eye of God. 
The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's 
teeth are set on edge, I knew thee, that thou wast an 
austere man, and I was afraid. In all of these cases 
the blame, if pushed back, must rest upon God at 



OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 153 

last ; and there in fact it is placed, even w^hen men 
are least conscious of making against him so horrible 
a charge. 

But nothing that man can devise or think of, can 
excuse or palliate sin, otherw^ise it w^ould not be sin. 
The blame of it cannot rest anyvs^here but upon him- 
self; otherv^ise it v^ould not be sin. The tempter 
himself cannot bear the blame of any sin but his own. 
For all the circumstances of every case in w^hich 
man can be placed, all the obstacles in the way of 
obedience, all the temptations which can arise, with 
all their power, are present to the mind of God, 
when he gives the command. Therefore for every 
excuse or palliation that man can devise or think of, 
for transgression, there must stand prepared before- 
hand this answer from the judgment of God. I 
knew you would have that excuse, that reason for 
disobedience when I gave you the command. I 
knew it all ; had weighed all its force. Yet I gave 
you the command notwithstanding, and meant to be 
obeyed, because I saw that that reason for disobeying 
was not valid nor sound. If I had seen that there 
could be any valid excuse for not doing what I com- 
manded you, I would not have given you the com- 
mand. Thou knewest that I was an austere man ! 
Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked 
servant. Every excuse, every palliation which man 
can think of to cover his sin, is always a device of 
the carnal mind, and utterly a delusion, which, how- 
ever valid it may appear, must perish in the presence 
of the searching and infallible judgment of God. At 



154 OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 

best it can be nothing more to his soul, than was the 
flimsy girdle of fig leaves to the naked body of 
Adam. 

This universal tendency of the sinful soul to try to 
cover its sin from its own eyes, and from the eye of 
God, together with the folly of every such attempt, is 
here symbolized in the most expressive manner, for 
the revelation to every man of the deceitfulness of 
his own depraved heart and mind. Nothing can 
avert the judgment of God in condemnation of sin. 

Thus also it is always, as here exemplified, that 
what appears to man the most generous and self- 
sacrifising action in the world, if it be forbidden by 
the Wisdom of God, must in the end generate in his 
soul the most loathsome and abominable selfishness ; 
or rather, it must become manifested as selfishness. 
For as love is the fulfilling of the whole law, so self- 
ishness, the want of love, must be the heart and 
substance of all transgress^* ^ of the law, however it 
may disguise itself. This it. . secret of that bitter 
and terrible hatred which so often arises, and which 
must sooner or later always arise, between those who 
have been led into transgression of the Wisdom of 
God, by the force and passion of human love. When 
the terror of God's judgment reaches the soul, if not 
before, all those feelings which seemed so generous 
and self-sacrifising are brought out in their true cha- 
racter. The semblance of generosity which they 
wore is pierced through by the eye of God, and 
stripped oflf. That only remains which was their 
heart and substance from the first, such selfishness as 



OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 155 

leads a man to lay the blame of his own sin upon his 
God, and upon the wife of his bosom, God only can 
choose for man what is truly generous. Man is not 
able to choose by his own wisdom that which shall 
abide the presence of the judgment of God. 

As the Voice of God approaches nearer to the 
origin of sin, its questioning becomes more searching, 
and implies more certain condemnation. What is 
this that thou hast done ? And the woman said, 
77^6 serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. This is 
the repetition in her of the same feelings and thoughts, 
in the substance of them, which had already been 
expressed by her husband, and which are symbol- 
ized by the girdle of fig leaves. Only it is to be 
observed that the word here translated, beguiled^ 
means to deceive by causing to forget. Instilling into 
the mind of the woman his subtle and poisonous sug- 
gestions, the tempter caused her to forget, to lose out 
of mind the command she had received. When she 
took of the tree and did eat, she was not thinking of 
the law of God, but of the pleasure of indulgence. 
She was in the act of seeing, that the tree was plea- 
sant to the eye, and good for food, and to be desired 
to make one wise. Thus, also, with the command, 
the penalty of disobedience, announced to guard her 
innocence, sank down out of her sight and faith, and 
full before her stood the anticipated pleasure of grati- 
fied desire. 

In like manner it is universally true, and here set 
forth to be recognised by all, that when the sensual 
desires rise up in rebellion against the authority of 



156 OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES, 

the Wisdom of God, revealed through the conscience 
in man^ he is Winded. The lav^ of God seems to 
recede. It growls dim and uncertain. The desire 
to experience immediate pleasure causes him to lose 
out of mind the command, with its penalty. The 
pleasure is something immediate, present and power- 
ful. It looms large and full before him, so as to fill 
his mind. The evil consequences of disobedience 
are future, dim and shadowy. They are uncertain 
in his eyes. The hope of escape from them arises. 
The man is beguiled in being caused to forget. 

In order to meet this universal tendency, and to 
keep ever present to the mind of the tempted, the 
authority of the law of God, with the certainty and 
horrible nature of the penalty of disobedience, when 
he, who is the only true light of the conscience, was 
manifested in the flesh, he opened his mission with 
the full announcement of the law. Till Heaven and 
earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass 
from the law till all he fulfilled. Also, the words in 
which he, who suflfered the whole force of the pen- 
alty of disobedience, describes it, are of such terrible 
import that they cause the flesh to thrill, and the hair 
to rise with horror. They are the outer darkness^ 
the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, the 
worm that never dies, and the unquenchable fire. 

The Voice of God has followed the guilty parents 
of the human race. In the midst of their hiding- 
place, under all the excuses and palliations which 
they have been able to devise, the judgment of God 
has reached them. Their poor girdle of fig leaves 



OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 157 

all stripped off, naked they stand in the presence of 
the flaming eye of Truth. They submit themselves to 
the judgment of him against whom they have sinned, 
without excuse and without palhation, as now they 
well know. They await the pronunciation in words 
of the doom which they have already incurred and 
brought upon themselves ; after which, God shall 
clothe them in other covering than fig leaves, and by 
other hands than their own. 

Thus, also, must the judgment of God at last reach 
the soul of every man who has sinned after the simi- 
litude of Adam's transgi'ession. So long as he stands 
framing excuses and palliations for his sin, seeks to 
cover it from his own eyes and from God, to fly and 
hide himself from the presence of the Voice in his 
conscience ; while he tries to escape conviction by 
any means whatsoever, this judgment is yet a judg- 
ment to come. It is following him, and one day shall 
surely find him out. Stripped of all these, naked, 
emptied of all self-trust, feeling that every excuse or 
palliation that he can possibly think of, is utterly a 
delusion, without the least validity, however it may 
appear to his wisdom, sensible that he is utterly help- 
less — thus, if he would be saved, he must surrender 
himself into the hands of the judgment of God. Upon 
him who does this, the judgment which God pro- 
nounces shall be mercy. He shall baptize him with 
all-purifying fire. He shall cause him to be crucified 
with Christ, to die with him unto sin, that with him 
he may live evermore unto God. He shall judge 
the evil in him, and destroy it out of him. That 



158 OF THE GIRDLE OF FIG LEAVES. 

which God shall lay upon him in the form of toil and 
sorrow and death, shall be the greatest blessing which 
he, being sinful, can receive. It shall be the means, 
by the grace of God, of purging out of him the seeds 
of corruption and death. He shall be clothed with 
the righteousness of God, by God's own hands. 

These are some of the truths, universal for man, 
which are set forth by, and under these events in the 
life of Adam. There are others, also, which can be 
brought into a clearer light, when we come to treat 
of the clothing of man with the skins of slaughtered 
animals by the hand of God. 



OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 159 



CHAPTER XII. 

OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 

** And Jehovah God said unto the serpent. Because thou hast done 
this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of 
the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat 
all the days of thy life. And I w^ill put enmity between thee 
and the vs^oman, and between thy seed and her Seed. He shall 
bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." 

In the temptation the Adversary succeeded in his 
mahgnant design of destroying the moral image of 
God from the soul of man ; and reflected his own 
likeness in its place. Now, therefore, he comes 
under the curse which his own short-sighted subtlety, 
the wisdom of enmity, has brought upon himself. 
This curse is not pronounced upon him directly, but 
upon the serpent, the instrument which he had chosen 
to reflect his own likeness in the soul of man ; and 
it is only by recognising the truth, that here, as be- 
fore, the serpent is taken as the symbol of the Devil, 
that what is spoken of it becomes applicable to him, 
and to his work and image in the spiritual nature of 
man. We must proceed therefore, to empty the 
symbol of some of its significancy. 

The serpent, before declared to be more subtle 
than any beast of the field, is unable, as we now be- 



160 OP THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 

hold him, to move in a straight, direct, right manner. 
His movements are tortuous — the most obhque and 
compUcated involutions and evolutions of his w^hole 
body. His eye is level v^ith the ground, so that he 
cannot see but the shortest distance ahead. He 
grovels upon his belly. He is the most greedy^ of 
all creatures. His food is of the most loathsome 
and abominable kind, vvrhich he swallows in the 
crudest masses. His mouth is full of deadly poison, 
which he seeks to inject into every other creature. 
He is the enemy of all things above himself, espe- 
cially of man ; and man is his enemy. They meet 
only that the serpent may bruise his heel, and he 
crush the serpent's head. This is the symbol here 
appointed by God to describe the nature and destiny 
of Satan, and of his likeness, the serpent in man. 

The spiritual adversary of God and man, there- 
fore, knows not the straight, direct, right guidance 
of the Wisdom and authority of God, which com- 
mands him to do this as right, and forbids him to do 
that as wrong. This he has cast off for the wis- 
dom of subtlety, his own creature, calculating wis- 
dom, which moves towards those objects only which 
seem good to itself, by the obhque and comphcated 
involutions and evolutions of the reasoning mind. 
His is not simple or direct or right, but tortuous. 
Now this wisdom, as we have seen, is not and can- 
not be, to any creature destined to immortality, an 

* " These animals (serpents) are above all others the most vora- 
cious. Happy is it for mankind that the rapacity of these frightful 
creatures is often their punishment." — Buffow. 



OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 161 

adequate guide of choice between good and evil. 
Therefore he is, with all his subtlety, short-sighted. 
His eye is level with the ground. He is a grovelling 
power ; utterly unable to look up to the pure, the 
true, the beautiful, the holy, with adoration and love. 
Towards these things, as he beholds them, he feels 
a perfect hatred. Evil he calls good, and good evil. 
He loves the loathsome and abominable ; all things 
that tend to work evil. It is his meat and his drink 
to do his own malignant will. His mouth is full of 
deadly poison, which he continually seeks to inject 
into all other natures, that he may destroy their spi- 
ritual well-being. He wages unceasing warfare 
against everything above him, especially against 
God, and God's image in man. But in all this he 
brings upon himself the evil which he intends against 
others. While he bruises the heel of the Seed of 
the woman, in and by the very act, he places his 
head under that heel, by which it is crushed, and his 
power destroyed. 

The great and decisive battle of this warfare, 
which had raged from the fall of Satan, in which his 
power was broken, and his head crushed, was 
fought by the Word and Wisdom of God incarnate 
in the man Christ Jesus. He entered into the human 
soul, the nature of man, from which his image had 
been defaced, and the image of Satan set up in its 
place ; from which the authority of his wisdom had 
been dethroned, to give place to the subtlety of the 
Devil. He met the enemy in his own dominions, 
conquered him there, and expelled him thence. In 



162 OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 

the flesh of Adam he encountered all the subtlety 
and malignity of Satan. He foiled all his weapons. 
The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the 
pride of a life independent of God, by which the 
first man had been overcome, had no power over 
him, the Second Man. In Jesus of Nazareth, he 
brought the flesh and soul and wisdom of man once 
more into perfect and filial subjection to, and unity 
with God, by revealing in him the Word and Wis- 
dom of God with power. Thus in Jesus, preserving 
him against all the assaults of the enemy, from all 
spot and taint of sin, he redeemed and rescued the 
nature of man. 

When, in the mystery of the Wisdom of God, 
whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, it was seen 
to be indispensable to the deliverance of his brethren 
from the power of the Devil, that Jesus should bear 
their curse, voluntarily he took it upon himself 
He descended to the source of the evil which had 
invaded human nature, to the lowest depths of the 
curse ; and by voluntarily bearing it, overcame it. 
For a man is not subdued by what he voluntarily 
suffers, but conquers it, by the force of his will. 
Therefore Jesus is so careful to declare, / lay down 
my life of myself ; no man taketh it from me, I have 
power to lay it down and have power to take it again. 
He was born of the woman according to the judg- 
ment pronounced upon her for her sin. Voluntarily 
he bore the cruel hatred and scorn of his brethren. 
Voluntarily he submitted himself to the wrath of 
God, and expiated the guilt of the sinner by offering 



OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 163 

up himself for the sacrifice, a lamb without spot. 
He took upon himself shame and toil and sorrow 
and death, the judgment of man for sin ; and thus 
made atonement between God and man. He 
overcame death by rising from under its bonds into 
newness of life, that he might destroy him who had 
the power of death, that is, the Devil. Out of the 
dark and mournful grave he brought life and im- 
mortality to light. He revealed the blessing that is 
in all the afflictions of the mortal life ; and thus 
took away their sting. He turned everything into 
blessing, into the means of salvation from sin, to all 
who believe on him. 

But above all, upon the cross he triumphed over 
the subtlety and malignity of Satan, in that he made 
him the instrument of destroying his own power. 
For all that the Power of evil could do, was to lay 
that only foundation stone of the salvation of man 
which could be laid, and which is the crucified 
Christ. Here it was, by the Redeemer upon the 
cross, to which he had been nailed by the mahce of 
the Devil, that he, with all his principalities and 
powers was triumphed over when most he seemed 
to triumph. Here he was made a spectacle of 
mockery and derision to the universe. By the de- 
monstration here given of the short-sighted folly of 
his wisdom, the wisdom of subtlety, in that it is 
damned to overreach and confound itself, the power 
of Satan over all who believe in the cross is de- 
stroyed. Here the head of the serpent is crushed. 
All the manifestations of his power which have ap- 



164 OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 

peared in the world since the day of the cross, are 
but the writhings of the lower extremities of a 
wounded snake, whose head has been crushed by 
the heel of man. 

But this symbol also describes the nature and des- 
tiny of the likeness of Satan in man. This is that in 
virtue of which the Scribes and Pharisees are called, 
Children of the devil, A generation of serpents ; in 
virtue of which Elymas the sorcerer is addressed in 
the words, O full of all subtlety and mischief thou 
child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, 
wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the 
Lord ? The head of this serpent in man is subtlety, 
the wisdom of the creature erected into independ- 
ence of, and opposition to the Wisdom of God. It is 
that wisdom in man which is first by its own nature, 
earthly, belonging to the sensual nature, but which 
adopted as the guide of choice between good and 
evil, becomes devilish. It is the carnal or fleshly 
mind. 

In the act of adopting this his own creature wis- 
dom as the guide of life, as we have seen, man re- 
belled against the authority of the Wisdom of God. 
He cast off the simple, direct, right wisdom of au- 
thority revealed in his conscience, commanding this 
and forbidding that, and bringing down from God 
into his soul the knowledge of the eternal difference 
between good and evil. He fell back upon his own 
creature wisdom, upon his own insights, upon the 
oblique and complicated processes of his own mind, 
as a guide of choice between good and evil. This 



OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 165 

was his sin. But under the guidance of this wisdom 
every choice of the man must be prescribed and dic- 
tated beforehand by the appetites, desires and affec- 
tions of the earthly nature at whose head it stands. 
According to it, he judges of all things from the earth- 
ly point of view. But, since he is destined to immor- 
tality, this is always a partial and false view. To 
do this is to be short-sighted as the serpent, whose 
head is level with the ground. For the only far- 
sighted wisdom is that of the conscience, which, 
when it is truly heard, and other voices are not mis- 
taken for its voice, gives its oracles of distinction be- 
tween good and evil, according to God's knowledge 
of these things, and in view of their everlasting con- 
sequences. Therefore man chooses evil instead of good. 
The evil of his choice enters into his own nature, de- 
grading and defiling it by reflex influence. Thus is 
strengthened and developed that evil which was the 
principle of the first act of sin. He falls prone upon his 
belly and grovels. He is no longer able to look upwards 
towards that which is pure and holy and self-sacri- 
fising with adoration and love. The immaculate 
holiness of Christ makes no more favorable impres- 
sion upon him in this state than it did upon the 
Scribes and Pharisees. Speak to him now of the 
beauty of holiness, and he knows not what you mean. 
There is no beauty in this that he should desire it. 
Tell him of the charm of meekness under insult and 
injury, of love to his enemies, of returning good for 
evil, and he knows not whereof you speak. The 
force of these words, beauty and charm, thus applied. 



166 OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 

does not reach him at all. Show him a good man, 
after the Wisdom and example of Christ, denying 
himself for the benefit of others, sacrifising his life 
and fortune to the welfare of his brethren, and all 
that he sees is a hypocrite, or a fanatic aiid fool. 
Lead him to the cross of Calvary, show him the man 
Jesus laying down his life in agony and blood for his 
brethren, and he will cry, He saved others ; himself he 
cannot save. Come down from the cross if thou be 
the Son of God, and I will believe. That joy for 
which the Redeemer endured the cross, despising the 
shame, is absolutely inconceivable to him. The 
Word of God is no longer food to him : he thinks he 
can live upon bread alone. 

Ah! he is subtle but not wise. The knowledge 
of the whole world of physical things may be laid 
open before him. He may stretch nature upon the 
rack and extort from her all her secrets. He may 
bridge the ocean with his ships, and weave over the 
earth a network of railroad. He may harness the 
winged lightning to bear his messages from pole to 
pole. He may be master of the most rigid and 
powerful logic, as a child controls the motions of his 
puppet. He may embrace the most comprehensive 
formulas of that science which pertains to things 
earthly and perishable, and which is all concluded 
within the limits of the ideas of time and space. 
The highest abstractions of mathematics, and meta- 
physics may be his playthings. Yet with all this, 
when you speak to him of God and spirit, of right 
and wrong, he will reply, I cannot see nor hear 



OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 167 

nor taste nor feel, nor smell God nor spirit nor right 
nor wrong. God is but a phantom of man's imagi- 
nation, created by his fears. There is no right nor 
wrong but pleasure and pain. 

All this, the creature wisdom erected into indepen- 
dence of the wisdom of God, is utterly in vain as a 
guide of choice between good and evil. Hence in 
its highest development, in the philosophers of the 
French revolution, it could lead to nothing but a reign 
of terror. Under its guidance the true light of life, 
which enlightens every man that comes into the 
world, through his conscience, goes out ; and the 
man is damned continually to choose amiss, evil for 
good, and thus to reduce himself more and more to 
the proneness of the serpent. All the most acute 
and subtle and scientific operations of his understand- 
ing are levied upon for the attainment of the gratifi- 
cations of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye 
and the pride of a life independent of God. For 
riches, honor, fame, beauty ; whatever can gratify 
the appetites, desires and affections ; whatever can 
feed the pride, and exalt the wisdom of the earthly 
nature, he is greedy as the serpent. He feeds upon 
the bread of envy, deceit, pride, vanity and lust. 
This is the loathsome food he relishes. His tastes 
and miserable enjoyments are only of that which 
pertains to this world, of evil. On his belly he goes, 
and eats dirt all the days of his life. 

Also, his mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. 
The jpoison of asps is under their tongues. The 
enmity of all those who bear the image of the ser- 



168 OP THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 

pent against the Seed of the woman is deadly and 
implacable. The dragon in them makes war upon 
all in whom the Seed is found, and will not be paci- 
fied but when drinking their blood. To this let the 
death of Jesus testify. To this let the blood of his 
martyrs witness. Of this the infidelity of the reign 
of terror is a proof " Crush the wretch."* This is 
the shibboleth of the seed of the serpent in their 
warfare against the seed of the woman. For this 
"wretch" was none other than he in whose life and 
sufferings and death, is seen nothing but meekness 
and purity and love and self-sacrifice for the good of 
others, even Jesus of Nazareth. 

This is the likeness of Satan, the serpent in man, 
whose head, in all them that believe, is crushed 
by Christ upon the cross. In order to see that this 
is so, we must now inquire after what manner it is 
done. 

The fundamental idea of the Gospel is the doctrine 
of atonement or reconciliation made between God 
and man by the obedience, sufferings and death of 
Christ ; whereby the justice of God is satisfied, so 
that he can be just, and yet the justifier of him that 
believeth in Jesus. This is a stupendous mystery to 
all creature wisdom, wholly insoluble by the rational 
mind of man. The logical connection between the 
sufferings of Christ and the satisfaction of the justice 
of God for the sinner, cannot be traced. It defies 

* These words were written at the close of the letters of corres- 
pondence between Frederick II. of Prussia and Voltaire, to express 
their implacable malignity against Christ. 



OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 169 

the human understanding. It is announced to man 
upon the authority of the Wisdom of God, and he is 
required to beUeve it in order to be saved. 

Against the truth of this declaration of God, the 
wisdom of the serpent in man, the carnal mind, 
makes war with all its subtlety and power, to prevent 
it from being believed. The weapons of its attack 
are such as these. Ought not God to love his own 
Son, being innocent and pure and holy, better than 
man unholy, polluted and rebellious ? Is it right that 
he should lay the sufferings of the guilty upon an 
innocent person even though he, having received the 
command from his father, be willing to make the 
sacrifice ? If God so loved man as to provide a pro- 
pitiation for his sins, not even sparing his own Son 
to accomplish this object, what need of a substitute 
at all to propitiate him ? Was he not already wholly 
propitious to man, since it is he who so loves man as 
to find a propitiation for him, even in the sacrifice of 
his own Son? True and proper justice does not 
demand that the innocent should suflfer in place of 
the guilty. It demands that the guilty should be 
punished. How then can the justice of God be 
satisfied with what justice does not demand ? 

To these and a thousand like cavils of the wisdom 
of the serpent, it is in vain to reply that the justice 
of God is not satisfied after a true and proper manner, 
but God's violated law demands a victim to honor it 
in the eyes of the universe ; that the sacrifice of 
Christ is designed merely as a grand moral spectacle 
to impress upon all intelligent creatures a proper 
8 



170 OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 

sense of its authority and inviolability. It is in vain 
to introduce here illustrations drawn from the imper- 
fection of human governments. These and all such 
views and illustrations are out of place here. For 
the law of God is the faithful transcription, the undis- 
torted mirror of his nature and attributes. If there- 
fore there be anything in his law which demands 
satisfaction for sin, there must be something in him 
which demands satisfaction for sin. How can there 
be any feature in the image and reflection which is 
not in that of which it is the image and reflection ? 

No less in vain is it to reply to these cavils, that 
the idea of justice, as it appears in the consciousness 
of man, is the abstract proposition that sin must be 
punished, but that it says not upon whom it must be 
punished ; whether upon the sinner or his substitute. 
The consciousness of man does not give abstract 
propositions at all. These are reached by a process 
of generalization or abstraction. The consciousness 
of man does not say sin must be punished. It utters 
in tones of thunder. My sin must he punished upon 
me. We cannot take out of this affirmation one 
part, and reason from that as true, then reject the 
rest. This argument for the necessity of a victim to 
satisfy the justice of God, which is drawn from the 
consciousness of man, as if it declared the abstract 
proposition, that sin must be punished, but did not 
say upon whom the punishment must be inflicted, 
whether upon the innocent or the guilty, is perhaps 
the most shallow sophism, that was ever devised by 
man to reconcile the Wisdom of God to his own. 



OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 171 

To reply with this to the cavil, no less than to reduce 
the sacrifice of Christ to a mere governmental 
scheme to save the honor of the law in the eyes of 
the moral universe, as if God's law were something 
arbitrary, and not the express transcript of his nature, 
is to answer the serpent with his own subtlety. 
When the atonement of Christ is received and be- 
heved in for such reasons as these, and would be 
rejected if these answers were not given, it is 
received only because it is thought to commend 
itself in the eyes of that very sensual wisdom, or 
carnal mind, which it was given to crush. 

The only scriptural answer to these and all possi- 
ble cavils of the serpent, is, O fool ! who art thou that 
repliest against God ? This is the thing which is 
announced upon the authority of the Wisdom of God, 
to be believed in as truth because God has said it. 
The substitution of the Innocent in place of the guilty 
is foolishness in the eyes of man's wisdom. This is 
the foolishness of the cross, which Paul was so care- 
ful to preach. God has warned us beforehand that 
it would seem to be folly in our eyes ; not because 
it is folly, but because man's wisdom is a fool, and 
cannot see things aright. In itself it is the Wisdom 
of God ; but man, left to himself, is such a fool that 
what is truly the highest wisdom, even the Wisdom 
of God, seems to be folly in his eyes. For the folly 
of God is wiser than the wisdom of man. Now it is 
evident that man, in the fact of believing in the 
validity of the sufferings of the innocent Son of God, 
for the justification of the sinner, which is foolishness 



172 OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 

to him, yet declared by God as the truth, must 
utterly renounce the validity of his own wisdom in 
favor of the Wisdom of God. In the fact of receiving 
this as the truth upon the authority of the Wisdom of 
God, is the wisdom of man in whose eyes it is folly, 
confessed and felt to be that which it truly is, a fool. 
Confidence in it, as a guide of choice between good 
and evil, is destroyed. By receiving that as true, 
which is folly in its eyes, the carnal mind, the head 
of the Serpent in man is crushed. The Wisdom of 
God is submitted to, and felt to be the only true law 
of distinction between good and evil. 

A single illustration may be here given. When 
the little child looks up to the heavens above, if left 
to his own intelligence, he will be perfectly sure that 
the sun moves, and the earth stands still. His father 
tells him that the fact is not at all as it appears to 
him ; but the earth is turning round faster than his 
top, and the sun stands still. It is foolishness in his 
eyes. He cannot yet receive any demonstration of 
the truth. But he has faith in his father, in his truth 
and wisdom. He believes what he is told to be the 
truth, although it does not so appear to him, because 
his father has told him so. In the fact of believing 
in this truth, in opposition to what would be his own 
independent judgment, he renounces his own wisdom, 
and adopts that of his father in its place. He cannot 
believe this without feeling that his own view of 
things, compared with the wisdom of his father, is 

folly. 

This is the effect produced in man by faith in the 



OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 173 

atonement of Christ, upon the authority of the Wisdom 
of God. Because it is opposed to his own wisdom, and 
yet true, in beheving it, he recovers that truth which 
he lost in the Fall, that his own wisdom is a fool ; 
that God only is wise, and therefore alone competent 
to be to him an adequate guide of choice in the dis- 
tinction between good and evil. He therefore who 
would explain away what Paul calls the foolishness 
of the cross of Christ, which he preached lest the 
cross should be made of more effect ; who would 
commend it in the eyes of human wisdom, takes away 
from it all its power to crush the carnal mind, the 
head of the Serpent in man. Thus preached it can 
be neither stumbling-block to the Jew, nor folly to 
the Greek ; neither can it be the Wisdom of God and 
the power of God, unto salvation to any sinful soul. 

This work of the Seed of the woman is now going 
in the world in these last times. He is crushing the 
head of the Serpent in man, by his Holy Spirit, 
through the faith of his cross. And this shall go on, 
whosoever would hinder it, until he send forth his 
judgment unto victory. 

Thus is the character and destiny of Satan, and of 
his likeness in man, set forth under this most power- 
ful symbol, appointed by God ; and which yet 
remains, and shall remain before the eyes of the 
human race while the sin of Adam is found upon the 
earth. 

Therefore, wherever we behold this infamous 
creature, the Serpent, we are to see reflected the 
accursed nature and consequences and destiny of 



174 OF THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT. 

subtlety, the wisdom of the creature erected into 
independence of, and opposition to the Wisdom of 
God, as a guide of choice between good and evil. 
When we consider the enmity between man and the 
snake, we are to regard it as an institution of God, 
which it is to symbolize and set before our eyes the 
enmity between God and Satan, and that between 
God's image in man and the carnal mind. When we 
feel that peculiar horror and loathing in the presence 
of the serpent which is universal, and to be cherished 
as a divinely appointed symbol, we are to learn from 
that, with what loathing the wisdom of subtlety in 
opposition to the Wisdom of God, is to be regarded. 
From the deadly sting of the serpent, we are to know 
the agonies of Christ for us ; and how deadly is the 
poison which the carnal mind, in its enmity, infuses 
into the spirit of man ; and with what power it cor- 
rupts and destroys the image of God in him. And 
when we crush the serpent's head we are to behold 
in that the symbol appointed by God to keep before 
our eyes the truth that he does utterly crush this 
earthly and sensual and devilish wisdom in Satan 
and in man, which, in pride and folly and madness, 
the creature has dared to prefer to the Wisdom of 
God as a guide and criterion of distinction between 
good and evil.^ 

* The ancient Egyptians, instructed perhaps by the tradition of 
this account, symbolized the prudential wisdom of man, with the 
logical faculty, which reaches its conclusions by oblique and com- 
plicated evolutions and involutions of thought, under the form of 
the serpent in motion. 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN. 175 



CHAPTER XIII. 

OF THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN. 

" Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and 
thy conception ; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children ; and 
thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." 

If anything were wanting to demonstrate that 
what is said in this account of the first man and 
woman, is spoken of them as types or representatives 
of the whole race, it is found here. For this judg- 
ment pronounced upon the first woman, without any 
intimation of its appHcation to any one else, is found 
to be, as a matter of fact, the judgment upon woman 
as such. 

From the foregoing views, we may perhaps be 
able to understand, why the tempter addressed him- 
self first to the woman rather than to the man. For 
it is to be observed, that she was beguiled into trans- 
gression by means of a sophism, which now it is easy 
to detect. It was a petitio principii, — a begging of 
the question. When the serpent advised her to aspire 
after a knowledge which might be to her an indepen- 
dent and sufficient guide of choice between good and 
evil, he admitted, in substance, that she was not then 
able to guide herself upon this point ; but he insisted 
that, if she would eat of the forbidden tree, that 



176 OF THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN. 

would open her eyes, so that she would after that be 
as God, knowing good and evil. But in order to ob- 
tain this knowledge, she must first act upon the as- 
sumption, that she was already able to choose aright 
in this case, when her eyes were not yet opened, in 
order to become able to choose aright hereafter ; 
that is to say, she must assume that her eyes were 
already opened, in order that they might become 
opened. The sophism is transparent. 

But, as we have seen, the woman is by creation 
inferior, dependent upon, and in subjection to the 
man, in respect to the earthly nature, by which she is 
married to him. But especially is she inferior to him 
in that sensual wisdom which stands at the head of 
this nature, whose legitimate sphere is the knowledge 
of things which pertain to the mortal life. When, 
therefore, the appeal is made to this faculty, she is 
more easily imposed upon than is he, by such false 
suggestions and sophistical reasonings as the tempter 
employed. 

And since it was by means of this earthly nature 
in them that the temptation must succeed, if at all, 
since it was its light or wisdom which was to be 
erected into an independent guide of choice between 
good and evil, there was a manifest subtlety in ap- 
pealing first to it in the woman, where it would be 
most easily imposed upon by false suggestions and 
sophistical reasonings. Here he would be most 
likely to succeed, by drawing that wisdom in her 
which was weaker than in her husband, and made to 
be dependent upon^ and in subjection to him, first, 



OP THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN. 177 

into independence of and opposition to him, then, to 
the Wisdom of God. 

Also, since the subjection of the woman, in respect 
to her earthly nature, to the man, was one of the 
symbols appointed by God to reflect into their souls 
their subjection to him, if she could be led to appeal 
to this wisdom independently of her husband, this 
symbol would be destroyed, and the truth, which it 
was intended to nourish in their hearts, would be left 
without its support. This symbol being violated, and 
the woman seduced, her influence would be united 
with the wiles of the tempter, to accomplish his ma- 
lignant designs upon the father and head of the 
human race, and through him upon all his posterity. 

But if they had continued in that estate in which 
they were created, it is evident that this subjection of 
the earthly nature of the woman to the man could 
never have been felt as a burden or inconvenience- — 
as anything else than a blessing, any more than that 
subjection of themselves to God, of which it was the 
divinely appointed symbol, could be felt as anything 
else than a blessing. For this nature in her was 
created inferior to, and necessarily dependent upon 
him, as they were inferior to, and of necessity depen- 
dent upon God. Also, while they both remained 
filled and informed with the Wisdom of God, as the 
guide of their life, the man could not require of the 
woman anything but that which was right, and which 
it would be her dearest human happiness to perform. 
Nor could her dependence upon her husband be felt 
before, as it must now be since her si'n. For in their 
8* 



178 OF THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN. 

garden of Paradise she had been surrounded with all 
things which were good for her. The food of her 
mortal nature stood ready provided to her hand. She 
needed none to toil for her support ; none to defend 
her from violence and harm. Her subjection to her 
husband was the blissful dependence of confidence 
and love ; the repose of her earthly nature in his, as 
they together rested, with the peace that passeth all 
understandings in God, the husband of their spiritual 
nature. 

But now all things were sadly changed. For she 
had seduced her husband into transgression, by w^hich 
he had cast off the only right guidance, that of the 
Wisdom of God. She had thus become the means of 
destroying all security for his requiring of her only 
what w^ould be right, and what she would be pleased 
to do. That nature in which they were one, whose 
desires and affections had flowed so sweetly together, 
would be one in perfection no longer. Its unity was 
shattered. Conflicting opinions and judgments would 
now arise between them. Feelings which had moved 
in unison and harmony, would jar in harsh discord. 
They both had become selfish and wayward crea- 
tures, full of whim and caprice. He would be tyran- 
nical, jealous and cruel. But to his worst tyranny, 
to his most unreasonable ill-treatment, to all his abuse 
of her weakness, she must submit. For one cause 
alone could she be allowed to separate from him du- 
ring her mortal life. And even this greatest offence 
she would often find it easier to pass over, than to 
separate from him who was the head of her earthly 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN. 179 

nature. Now, also, they were about to be driven 
forth into a world cursed for their sake, so that it 
would yield them a scanty and meagre subsistence, 
not until it should be subdued by labar, to which the 
strength of the woman was inadequate. Evil days 
were at hand, days of unbridled lust and bloodshed, 
when the whole earth should he filled with violence. 
If she had been left to her own courage and hardi- 
hood and strength, doubtless she would have perished^ 
and with her the human race. 

Therefore her desire should be to her husband, and 
he should rule over her. This expression is repeated 
of Abel to his elder brother, Cain. His desire shall 
be to thee, and thou shalt rule over him. Its force is, 
that Abel should feel his inferiority to his brother in 
physical strength, in age, and in the dignity of his 
birth ; should be conscious of dependence upon him, 
and should look to him with desire for counsel, guid- 
ance and protection : so that Cain, as the inheritor 
of the birthright, and its authority over the other 
members of the family, should have the ascendency 
and rule over him. So the woman had reduced her- 
self to that state in which she needed one of greater 
strength, and courage, and hardihood, to toil for her 
support, to defend her from violence, and to be a guide 
to her mortal life through its pathway of thorns and 
thistles. She would be forced to recognise and to 
feel that dependence upon her husband which she had 
so foolishly violated, because now it was necessary 
even to the preservation of her existence. Now that 
nature in her by whose rebellion she had sinned, 



180 ar THE JUDGMENT UFQN WOMAN, 

Would be forced back into a sense of its inferiority, 
and into subjection, by the circumstances into which 
she had plunged herself by her sin. The responsi- 
bility and care of providing for the mortal life of them 
both was committed to the man^and with it necessa- 
rily the right and the duty of supervision and control. 
Henceforth, with desire must she look to him for 
guidance, defence and support, even though his rule 
over her should be capricious, tyrannical and cruel. 

Thus it is plain that, by the sin of the woman, a 
form and significancy are given to her subjection 
to the man. In this new form it is not only the 
symbol of her subjection to God, but also of the 
nature and consequences of her sin, and a chastise- 
ment of her guilt. That nature in her, by whose 
proud elevation to command where it had nothing to 
do but obey, she sinned, is now, by the circumstan- 
ces in which she has placed herself, forced back into 
subjection to her husband, that thereby it may be 
trained to submission to the Wisdom of God. This 
subjection is now a most holy symbol to nourish 
penitence and humiliation, and the feeling of her de- 
pendence upon God. 

To the influence of this symbol in the long series 
of generations, is to be ascribed in a great degree, 
the difference between man and woman as they are 
now" found, in respect to susceptibility of religious 
impressions. For as the essence of all sin against 
God is rebellion, so the very heart and substance of 
true piety is submission- — the perfect subordination of 
the earthly to the spiritual nature ; of the spiritual 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN. 181 

nature to the conscience, and of the conscience to 
the Word and Wisdom of God. This submission is 
that of faith and conscious dependence in love ; first, 
passively, to every, even the least event of life, re- 
garded as the ordination of the wisdom and love of 
God; and secondly, in an active sense, the submis- 
sion of obedience to every command of his law. 
Now that nature in the woman bv whose rebellion, 
seeking to lead and command where it had nothing to do 
but to follow and obey, she sinned, is forced back into 
conscious dependence and submission to her husband. 
This prefigures in her and ushers in, the subjection 
of her spiritual nature to God, of which it is his ap- 
pointed and consecrated symbol. It works in her 
the same effect which is produced in the child by his 
subjection to the authority of his parents. It is to 
her what the law of Moses was to the sincere and 
obedient Israelite — it is her schoolmaster to lead 
her to Christ. Thus as a little child brought up in 
obedience and subjection, she is led by the Lord 
into his kingdom, more readily, and with less resist- 
ance, than is man. 

For man has this holy symbol before him, but not 
in him. He beholds it, but does not feel its chastis- 
ing and subduing power. There is none in this 
world to whom his earthly nature, with the pride of 
its strength and wisdom, is forced into subjection. 
Therefore it has unfolded itself in him with ranker 
luxuriance than in woman. The mind in him has be- 
come so puflfed up with the pride and conceit of its 
success in the sciences that pertain to this life, that it 



182 OF THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN. 

obstinately refuses to stoop to the humiliating sub- 
mission of the gospel. It cannot consent to account 
itself a fool that it may be filled with the authority of 
the Wisdom of God. It has thus attained a more 
formidable development in man than in woman. It 
has even reached that monstrous arrogance that he 
undertakes to explain and give account of her greater 
susceptibility of religious impressions, by her inferi- 
ority to him — inferiority only in that which is earthly 
and mortal, and in that wisdom which is conversant 
only with the things that perish. Inferior in all this 
indeed she is ; but in that charity which never fail- 
eth ; in that which is meek and humble and self- 
sacrifising and submissive to God ; which is capable 
of conscious dependence upon, and obedience to him, 
in love, woman, as she is now found, is immeasura- 
bly superior to man. Most blessed has this subjec- 
tion of the woman proved to her spiritual well-being. 
We must now turn our attention to the infliction 
upon the woman for her sin, of pain and sorrow in 
child-bearing. This also has an immediate connec- 
tion with, and relation to the nature of her sin. For 
she had sinned by the elevation of her sensual nature 
with its wisdom over the spiritual in her, and over its 
informing Hght, the authority of the Wisdom of God. 
For the gratification of the lust of the flesh and the 
lust of the eye, and the desire to be wise in a sense 
in which she was not already wise, she had not scru- 
pled to rebel against the authority of the clearly 
enunciated law of God, revealed from without and 
within. And now was attached to the gratification 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN. 183 

of those feelings in her in which the whole force of 
the sensual nature is summed up and concentrated, 
the most terrible pain and anguish and sorrow which 
she could suffer and yet live. Thus she received in 
that nature by which she had been led to transgress, 
a terrible memorial and symbol of the nature and 
consequences of her sin, to reflect into her soul the 
knowledge and conviction of the sin itself, and also 
of the fearful spiritual chastisement to which she had 
subjected herself, that she might go in penitence and 
humiliation all her days. 

This institution of God set up in the bosom of daily 
life, for the most holy purposes, the ingenuity and 
folly of men have been able neither to destroy nor 
corrupt. It remains universal as the race, and as the 
sin of man ; modified only by the degree of the 
strength in which the sin which is after the simili- 
tude of AdanCs transgression^ is found. For among 
savages and the most degraded of the human race, 
who have no clearly enunciated law of right and 
wrong revealed from without or within ; whose sin, 
therefore, against such a law cannot be clear and 
precise and conscious, the pains and sorrows of child- 
bearing are very light. Their sin after the simili- 
tude of Adam's transgression, the preference of their 
own wisdom over the clearly enunciated and recog- 
nised Wisdom of God, is ill defined. Therefore the 
symbol of this sin has not assumed that terrible 
form and power among them which it has among 
civilized nations. When the commandment shall 
come to them sin shall revive ; and this symbol of its 



184 OF THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN. 

nature and consequences shall assume that fearful 
form which it has wherever there is rebellion against 
the known law. The luxury with other means by 
which this judgment is executed, is not here left out 
of view. For luxury itself, enervating the physical 
constitution, is one of the clearest and strongest 
manifestations of rebellion against the known law ; 
since it is not possible except where man has brought 
his mind w^ith all its powers into subservience to the 
gratification of the desires of the sensual nature ; 
that is to say, among civilized, reflecting and enlight- 
ened nations. For among these the law of right and 
wrong, however it may be rebelled against, is always 
clearest and most precise. 

To him w^ho looks upon all things in the light of 
the Word and Wisdom of God, this judgment upon 
the woman is a most solemn and holy thing. For 
since it was instituted by God as a memorial of the 
nature and punishment of sin, as such it is always 
regarded and treated in the Scriptures. For this 
purpose it is used with a frequency and emphasis 
second only to death itself Whether it be the 
penalty of sin laid upon Christ, through whose suflfer- 
ings the new man is born into the kingdom, or that 
inflicted upon the sinner himself, the judgment of 
God is continually set forth under this powerful 
symbol. 

For, although the sinner may long pursue with 
seeming impunity the objects of the desires of his 
own heart ; though the pleasure of the gratification 
of the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN. 185 

the pride of life, may be keen and transporting for 
the moment, causing him utterly to forget the law of 
his God, and to lose the conscience of sin, for the 
time ; though the evil consequences of sin may be 
long deferred, they are inevitable — a judgment cer- 
tain to come. They shall come upon him in a mo- 
ment when he is in perfect fancied security, suddenly ; 
with such surprising and terrible power, that all the 
fleeting pleasure of sin shall be swallowed up, and 
no more remembered, except with pain and anguish 
and sorrow. They shall be afraid ; pangs and sor- 
row shall take hold upon them : they shall he in pain 
as a woman that travaileth. When they shall say, 
peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon 
them as travail upon a woman with child ; and they 
shall not escape. 

Also, under this symbol the doctrine of the birth 
of the soul into the kingdom of God through the suf- 
ferings of Christ, is continually set forth. Verily I 
say unto thee, except a man he horn again he cannot 
see the kingdom of God, . . . He shall see of the travail 
of his soul and he satisfied. In these and a great 
multitude of kindred passages, the relation which the 
son of God bears to the redeemed, for whose sins he 
suffered the judgment of God, is symbolized, and 
shadowed down to man under the relation which 
the human mother bears to her children, who are 
born not otherwise than through her pangs. 

This institution of God it is which perhaps, more 
than anything else, rebukes the unspiritual and un- 
circumcised mind of man, so prone to cavil at the 



186 OF THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN. 

doctrine of the Word, that he must be born into the 
kingdom of God, into eternal Hfe, through the suffer- 
ings of another. It speaks to all who have ears to 
hear, as with the voice of God from heaven, conde- 
scending to reason with them. Do you not see that 
the child of human parents comes into the world 
only through pangs and sorrows? Can you think 
that I have ordained this wonderful fact for nothing ? 
Can you not learn from it to put to silence the ob- 
jections of your foolish mind against the declaration 
of my Wisdom, that the spiritual children of the 
Redeemer, the receivers of his life, and the heirs of 
his glory, can be born only through the sufferings of 
him who is both father and mother in one ? 

Also under this symbol is set forth the joy of 
Christ, for which he endured the cross, despising the 
shame. For, as the woman remembereth no more the 
anguish for joy that a man child is born into the 
world, so he sees of the travail of his soul, and is 
satisfied. Willingly he bears the sufferings which 
are laid upon him that he may bring forth into a 
new life his heir, the human spirit, and introduce it 
into the inheritance of God. In this his joy is above 
every joy, as for it he has received a name above 
which is every name ; that at the name of Jesus every 
knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in 
earth, and things under the earth. 

The influence of this institution in purifying the 
heart of the woman has not been less than that of 
her subjection to her husband in rendering her sus- 
ceptible of religious impressions. For the terrible 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN. 187 

pain and anguish and sorrow inflicted upon her sen- 
sual nature in child-bearing, could not pass without 
great effects. The impression which the experience 
of this judgment makes upon the mother, is of ne- 
cessity imparted to the daughter by the silent yet 
irresistible intercommunion of life. From genera- 
tion to generation, and from age to age, it has not 
ceased to work upon the female heart and mind ; 
until it has come to stand before woman, as such, 
like a terrible phantom. It rises before her with 
every temptation, and threatens her with mysterious 
and awful premonitions. Hence where man aban- 
dons himself, woman shrinks and trembles before 
the dark future. This has always been a purifying 
influence upon her heart and feeling, which he has 
not. Under its power she has become more pure 
of heart than is he. The worldling, or the debau- 
chee, who knows her only from those whom the 
corruption of man has reduced to the lowest de- 
gradation, and who looks at even these through his 
own vile affections, may sneer and mock as much 
as he pleases — it is true that there is no comparison 
between man and woman as such, in respect to 
purity of heart. Woe for the human race if this 
had not been so ! If man had found no obstacle to 
his lust in the repelling and subduing purity of 
woman's heart ; if he had not been constantly drink- 
ing at the fountain of the love of a mother, a sister, 
a wife, a daughter ; and had not been purified by 
these influences, the human race would have sunk 
long ago into irredeemable corruption and ruin. 



188 OF THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN. 

The woman was first in the transgression, and 
seduced her husband to take part with her in oppo- 
sition to the Wisdom and love of God, therefore, in 
addition to those chastisements which follow, and 
which are included under the judgment upon man, 
these two chastising memorials and symbols of the na- 
ture and consequences of sin, are inflicted upon her, 
and set up in her earthly nature. Under their powerful 
influence, she has become more meek and submis- 
sive, more susceptible of everything pure and beau- 
tiful and holy, than is man. It is not her vocation 
to explain the gospel to him in words and ideas. 
He is more capable of thought than is she. To him 
religion is often but a thought. He seeks to be saved 
by thinking. He mistakes to know for to he ; science 
for life. He would rather understand the gospel 
than submit his understanding to it. He continually 
seeks to know of the doctrine whether it be of God 
or not first, in order that afterwards he may do it. 
But too often he loses the force of those words of 
him who only knew ; If ye will {first) do the will of 
my Father, then shall ye know of the doctrine, whether 
it he of God, or whether I speak of myself For faith 
in Christ personally, and the obedience oi faith, the 
faith of the little child in his father, must precede 
sight, or the knowledge of the truth in the clearness 
and demonstration of ideas. 

But with woman it is diflferent. She can believe in 
Christ, personally, sl^ a little child in its father, when as 
yet her ideas of the doctrines he has taught are but ob- 
scure. She can submit her mind unto him implicitly 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON WOMAN. 189 

with less resistance than man. She feels more 
vividly than does he. To her the Gospel is a life 
rather than a thought. She has been trained to sub- 
mission, and her heart prepared to behold the beauty 
and glory of the purity of Christ, by the chastening 
power of these symbols set up by God in her nature. 
Hence by her union with man, as once she led him 
into rebellion, now she leads him back to submission. 
By the powerful communion of life she continually 
informs him with her own meek and submissive and 
obedient spirit. She sheds upon his heart a light 
higher than that of knowledge, the light of love. 
She breathes into him something of that purity of 
heart, which she so much more readily receives from 
God than does he. 

It was a woman who first recognised the mission 
of Jesus. Women were his most faithful followers 
and ministers through life. A woman was last at 
his cross, and first at his sepulchre. To a woman 
he first showed himself after his resurrection. As 
through her, the evil came, so through her alone re- 
demption comes into the world. It is the Seed of 
the woman who alone can crush the Serpent's head. 
The immaculate Redeemer was born of a woman, but 
owns no human father. 



190 OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 

" And unto the man he said, Because thou hast hearkened to the 
voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I com- 
manded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground 
for thy sake ; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy 
life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee ; and 
thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face 
shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground ; for out of it 
wast thou taken : for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou re- 
turn," 

The reason given for this judgment upon man, 
Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, 
would seem to exclude woman from its effects. But 
this is only an appearance. For, we have seen that 
man, in following the guidance and counsel of the 
woman, to whom he was united by the bond of the 
earthly nature, yielded to the solicitations of the 
affections of that nature in opposition to the authority 
of the Wisdom of God. His sin therefore was the 
same, in the substance of it, with hers ; for which 
this judgment is pronounced upon both. This is evi- 
dent from the fact that the woman, no less than the 
man, suffers the evils which it describes. It is the 
chastisement upon man as such; that is to say, upon 
humanity ; of which every human being is the heir. 



OP THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 191 

In order the better to comprehend its significancy 
and object, we must observe that the spiritual evils, 
the loss of spiritual life, of the death in trespasses 
and in sins, of barrenness of good and fertility of 
evil, man brought upon himself by his ow^n foolish 
and wricked act of rebellion against the authority of 
the Wisdom of God, w^hereby he cast off the only 
sufficient guide of choice between good and evil ; 
and separated himself from God, as a branch from 
its parent root and stem. These evils, really and 
truly the judicial penalty of his sin, were none the 
less the inevitable consequences of his own act. But 
the design of God to save man from this penalty, 
was announced to him as soon as he had sinned, in 
the promise that the Seed of the woman should crush 
the head of the serpent. In order that this promise 
of salvation from sin should be fulfilled in man, it 
was necessary that he should not lose the feeling of 
deprivation and want ; that the knowledge and con- 
viction of the nature and consequences of his sin, 
with the feeling of its guilt, should not perish out of 
his heart. And in order that these should be kept 
fresh and living within him, he needed of them an 
outward reflection and symbol, as we need the sacra- 
ment of baptism to nourish in our minds and hearts 
the knowledge and conviction of our spiritual defile- 
ment. God did not deny him that which now, in his 
fallen state, was necessary for his salvation. The 
earth became barren of good, and fruitful of evil, and 
his own earthly nature by which he had been seduced 
into sin, was subjected to toil and sorrow and death. 



192 OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 

In respect to the curse upon the ground for man's 
sake, it is to be remembered that the country in 
which the garden of Paradise was situated is called 
a land of Delight. It is hard to conceive of this 
land, so described, as full of thorns and thistles, of 
noxious and poisonous herbs, before the sin of man. 
It would seem that in such a land tempests and hurri- 
canes and destroying lightning would not ravage the 
beauties of nature. This description would seem to 
forbid us to conceive of the brute world in continual 
and deadly war — the lion tearing the kid, the wolf 
drinking the blood of the lamb — before the creature 
had become subject to vanity through the sin of man. 

Also, it is most certain that there is a correspon- 
dency* between the unseen and spiritual world, and 

* The ** doctrine of correspondences," between things in heaven 
and things on earth, is a great point with the Swedenborgians It 
was known, they tell us, to the most ancient church, but afterwards 
lost, and for the re-revelation of it they honor their head and founder 
as an inspired man. He saw sheep and lambs in heaven ; wolves 
and serpents in hell. Now, some of these people are called scholars. 
They ought to know that these vagaries are the most gross and mate- 
rial burlesque of the fundamental idea of the Platonic philosophy. 
The doctrine of eternal and essential "ideas," the types and sub- 
stance of all things that " do appear," to the knowledge of which 
Plato tried to soar, and thence to descend to a perfect science of all 
things earthly, includes the whole of that correspondence between 
things above and things below, which is ascribed to the great North- 
ern dreamer as a divine revelation, and is without his absurdities. 
Nor was this at all original with the Greek philosopher. It has been 
known from the foundation of the world. It is set forth in the sacred 
books of the Hindoo Bramins, in all its profundity, though not with 
that logical precision and beauty which it could not receive except 
from the mind of a Greek. 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 193 

the things which do appear. The whole visible crea- 
tion must be, in some sort, an image of the spiritual 
world, otherwise it could not be a manifestation of the 
glory of God. There must be a reflection of spiritual 
things in the things that are made, else these could 
not serve the purposes for which they are continually 
used in the Scripture to express and declare spiritual 
truths. If this were not so, the expressions, God is 
light, God is love, and indeed the whole Scripture, 
could have no meaning for us. The patterns of all 
things belonging to the tabernacle of this earth are 
to be seen in the mount of the Lord. 

So, also, there is a correspondence between the 
higher and lower grades of the things that are made, 
between that which is in man on the one hand, and 
that which is in the brute and in nature, on the other. 
This is everywhere assumed in the Scriptures, and 
often described. We have already seen that the 
nakedness of man's body was the symbol of his inno- 
cence ; that he had nothing within which needed to 
be covered from the eye of God, and that the garden 
of Paradise corresponded to his inward Hfe. So now 
his naked body must be clothed, because his soul needs 
robes of righteousness. So now thorns and thistles 
correspond without to the spiritual state to which he 
has reduced himself. Also, it is to be observed, that 
the flood was in waiting when the earth had become 
so filled and polluted with violence that it must be 
.purified by the waters of a deluge, destroying the 
guilty race. The rainbow* is first mentioned when 

* The difficulty which arises from the manner in which the rain- 
9 



194 OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 

it was needed for the symbol of the new covenant, 
which God would make with the newly baptized hu- 

bow is first mentioned in Scripture, may be removed, if we conceive 
of the earth before the flood as imperfectly drained. It is a matter 
of fact, that the process of draining, by which God gathers the waters 
together into one place, and causes the dry land to appear, is now 
going on in many parts of the earth, as truly as of old. The whole 
of what is called the Lake country of North America, was, at a com- 
paratively late date, under water. One day those lakes must be 
drained off, and their bottoms, except where they are on a level with 
the ocean, or shut in by impassable barriers, will be, like the sur- 
rounding country, covered with cornfields. While this process was 
so new as we may conceive it to have been before the flood, rain 
was not wanted, because a mist would go up from the moist earth 
and water the whole face of the ground. This is the case even yet 
with those parts of the earth which have been most lately drained, 
which scarcely suffer at all when the rain does not fall for many 
months. Also, during this period, rain would be impossible ; for, 
in order to its production, the water must be well drained off* from 
the earth, and gathered together into immense bodies, upon whose 
surface the heat of the sun may act to produce by evaporation those 
dense masses of w^andering vapor, whose condensation waters the 
thirsty ground. But not until the formation of these dark clouds, 
could the bow in the heavens be reflected in any precise form. 

What confirms this view is, that the elephant, the hippopotamus, 
the tapir, the alligator, and animals of the same sort, the living but 
degenerate representatives of that huge, informe animal world whose 
fossil remains are found in the bones of the mammoth, the great 
saurians, and the like, are all lovers of the marshy and imperfectly 
drained portions of th© earth. From this it would appear, that when 
the earth was inhabited by this sort of creatures, in numbers and 
species so much greater than now, it must have been less perfectly 
drained than now. During this period, also, the animal part of 
man, after he had been driven forth from Paradise, the high and 
drained situation of which is demc^strated by the mention of four 
great rivers which had their source in the garden, might naturally 
partake to some degree of this informe and gigantic character. 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 195 

man race, in the person of Noah — the type of the 
regenerated soul. According to the predictions of the 
prophets, as it would seem, the perfect renovation of 
the life of man will be reflected in the natural world. 
This new life demands, as its appropriate outward 
environment, that new heaven and new earth which 
John saw in beatific vision. 

Also, there may be a connection between man and 
the natural world of the most vital kind, which, like 
everything else pertaining to life, must be wrapped 
up in inscrutable mystery. For the life which is in 
the brute is evidently affected and modified in the 
most powerful manner, by that which is in man. 
Perhaps there is a point where that nature in man 
which is of the earth, earthy, centres in unity with 
that of the animal creation, and through it, with the 
whole natural world : so that the creature becomes, 
of necessity, a partaker of man's good and evil. If 

Therefore the Scriptures, with all the earliest traditions of the 
human race, speak of giants. 

But when the earth became so much drained as to need rain, and 
by consequence, the water was gathered together into oceans, the 
sun's rays, acting upon their surface, would produce by evaporation 
those dark and heavy masses of vapor which condensed become 
rain. Hence both the rain and the rainbow are first mentioned at 
the flood. As man first felt the shame of his naked body after he 
had sinned, as thorns and thistles then first made their appearance, 
as the flood waited to purify the polluted earth when it needed it, 
so, when an outward symbol for a new order of inward and spiritual 
things was needed, the rainbow came out to serve that purpose ; and 
all in virtue of the harmony and correspondence which is ordained 
of God, between the outward and inward, the visible and invisible, 
the natural and spiritual worlds. 



196 OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 

this were so, those symbols of universal righteousness 
and peace and love, which are drawn by the prophets 
from the brute world, renovated, and restored to or- 
der and harmony, would become most expressive. 
If this were so, it would clear up those words of St. 
Paul, so hard to he understood, in which he speaks of 
the subjection of the creature to vanity, for the sin of 
man ; and destined with him unto redemption. For 
the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the 
manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature 
was made subject unto vanity not willingly. For 
the creature itself shall he delivered from the hondage 
of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children 
of God. 

However these things may be (and they are not 
presented here as interpretations of the Word of God, 
nor as matters of science), it is certain that, as the 
garden of Paradise had been the appropriate envi- 
ronment and symbol of man's innocent and happy 
life, and was even necessary for its perfection and 
preservation, so, now that he had sinned, God saw 
fit to place him in a new and very different outward 
sphere. Therefore he sent him forth into a world 
cursed for his sake, under which curse it became the 
most significant reflection and symbol of the evils of 
that spiritual degradation into which he had plunged 
himself. Evil had entered into him in whom were 
summed up all the perfections of the creation ; that 
evil was now reflected in the creation itself. The 
eye of the creature was diseased, and the body be- 
came blinded. The head, the heart, of the creation 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 197 

was sick, and all the members suffered with it. He 
had subjected himself to the bondage of corruption 
and to vanity ; the things which were made for him, 
were subjected to the bondage of corruption and to 
vanity with him. Selfishness had now become the 
mode of his being ; selfishness was reflected in the 
world which depended upon him. He had aspired 
to independence of God, had set up his own wis- 
dom and will in opposition to the Wisdom and will 
of God, and thus destroyed his harmony with 
the world above him. The world below him, over 
which he was made to rule, now aspired to indepen- 
dence of him, set up, so to speak, its own wisdom 
and will in opposition to his, and thus destroyed its 
harmony with him. He had rebelled against God ; 
the creature rebelled against him. He had become 
the enemy of God ; all things subject to him became 
his enemy. Henceforth storms and tempests, brutes 
and reptiles should seek to dethrone him, as he had 
sought to dethrone God. He must rule by his greater 
power, as God maintained his throne because the 
weakness of God is stronger than man. He had re- 
fused to render to God the fruit of his spirit ; the 
earth now refused to render to him the fruit of her 
increase. He now, as God^s husbandry, required to 
be worked, broken up with affliction and sorrow, and 
fertilized with the seed of divine life communicated 
to him anew, before he would yield fruit unto God ; 
so now the earth must be broken up and tilled, and 
fertilized ; the seed planted, watered and tended with 
unceasing toil and care, before she would yield her 
fruits unto him. Left to his own native tendencies 



198 OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 

and powers, to his own wisdom, choice and will, he 
would now bring forth only evil, that which was 
worthy in the sight of God to be burned ; so now the 
earth of her own will, should bring forth unto him 
thorns and thistles which men gather^ and they are 
hurned. 

Thus the evil which is in nature and the brute 
in their relations to man, became the most vivid 
reflection and symbol of the evil in him, in his rela- 
tions to God. As such this evil is always assumed 
and treated in the Scripture. The parable of the 
sower, that of the wheat and the tares, and others, 
are founded upon the assumption that in the earth's 
barrenness of good and fertility of evil there is a 
reflection of the evil that is in man. When therefore 
we consider that this curse was inflicted upon the 
earth for man's sin, and that, when God makes one 
thing like another, he does it with design, it is mani- 
fest that man is intended to find in this curse upon 
the earth, a symbol of his own barrenness of good 
and fertility of evil ; that the knowledge of his spi- 
ritual desolation may be kept ever before his eyes, 
and reflected into his soul. Blinded by the delusive 
light of the carnal mind, confused by the babble of 
science about natural laws, he may cease to feel the 
power of this symbol ; still it remains, and shall 
remain, while the sin of Adam is found upon the 
earth, as an institution of God for the instruction of 
a sinful race. 

The curse of barrenness upon the ground for man's 
sake, was the necessary condition of the chastise- 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 199 

ment of toil, both of body and mind, upon himself. 
This made constant prudence, vigilance, and thought, 
with the labor of his hands, indispensable to his con- 
tinued existence. 

Also, the necessity of labor arose directly out of 
the sin which he had committed. For, as we have 
seen, he had adopted a guide of life wholly inade- 
quate to be to him a correct criterion of choice be- 
tween good and evil. Following it he must continu- 
ally choose amiss, evil for good. Hence what he 
chooses and follows, as good, utterly fails to satisfy 
him ; and he is continually tormented with a feeling 
of emptiness and want. This craving of which none 
are without the most painful experience, except those 
who have descended nearest to the rank of the brute, 
sends him forth upon an ever fruitless quest to satisfy 
it. For under the guidance of his own wisdom, he 
never can succeed in finding the satisfying good, 
because his soul can be filled and satisfied only with 
that which the Wisdom of God marks as good, and 
chooses for him. Therefore the more he gains of 
that which seems good in his eyes, the more he 
craves, and the more earnestly and laboriously re- 
news his seeking. This is to reflect into his mind 
and heart, and cause him to know by the most bitter 
experience, the truth that in his sin he has chosen a 
guide of life wholly inadequate to distinguish aright 
between good and evil. 

Through this bitter yet most blessed experience of 
the shadowy and unsatisfactory nature of earthly 
good, the human race is passing from generation to 



200 OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 

generation and from age to age. Since the Fall, 
man has been laboring to dig out of the earth his 
true good ; to find in things earthly a portion to 
satisfy his soul, which should remain with him for 
ever. The ancient Egyptians addressed themselves 
to their abstract yet sensual religion, around which 
their whole life revolved, to fill their craving hearts, 
and to establish and maintain their well-being and 
prosperity. What did they become ? What are 
they now ? Babylon and Persia would fill themselves 
with the pride of despotism and outward pomp. 
They bloomed for awhile and then withered as a 
summer flower. Greece was seduced by the charms 
of beauty and art. She has sunk down so low that 
she cannot appreciate her own works. The Romans 
worshipped military glory and conquest. With in- 
finite labor and bloodshed, they acquired all that 
these could give. Italy is now an insignificant de- 
pendency of other military powers. The Hindoos 
sought in metaphysics the knowledge of the true 
good of man. But this with them, as with the Egyp- 
tians, degenerated into the grossest sensuality ; and 
they have sunk into imbecility. The Chinese, in 
monstrous pride and conceit of their own wisdom 
and self-sufficiency, have tried to wall out all other 
nations and to shut themselves up within themselves, 
until, professing themselves t^ be wise, they have be- 
come fools, and utterly vain in their imaginations. 

All these things are in vain for man when sought 
as a substantial and permanent good. His kingdoms 
and empire§5,all things that he can work out for him- 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 201 

self by his own wisdom and toil, rise and fall like the 
waves of the troubled ocean. Still he is in want ; 
still surrounded with thorns and thistles which pierce 
his soul. And yet he continually repeats experiments 
that he knows have a thousand times failed. The 
nations of Europe, Russia with the sword, Germany 
with literature, France with science, and England 
with commerce and wealth, are seeking to achieve 
something for the good of man, to fill his soul ; while 
the great hope of America is the sovereignty of the 
people and the mass-meeting. Vanity of vanities ; 
all is vanity ! These experiments, no less than those 
which have preceded them, shall all utterly fail to 
work out the well-being of man. One day their 
vanity shall appear. The judgment of toil shall not 
be without its effect. Man shall yet, through it, be 
taught the folly of his own wisdom, and this great 
craving, palpitating heart of humanity, shall lose its 
confidence in itself, feel its own impotence, and cry 
with infinite desire, Blessed he he that cometh in the 
name of the Lord. Then shall the creature rejoice 
for its redemption draweth nigh. In Him, the Word, 
and Wisdom of God, shq.ll man recover once more, 
the lost Paradise. Instamped with his image of 
meekness, humility, purity, and self-sacrifice, filled 
with his love to God and man, informed with his 
everlasting righteousness, shall the human race find 
its true good and all-satisfying portion. 

That which is going on in the human race repeats 
itself continually in the lives of individuals. This 
world opens upon us in youth with the fairest pro- 



202 OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 

mises. We cannot but believe that, with prudence 
and industry, we shall be able to achieve something 
to make us happy, to satisfy our hearts. We set 
ourselves to attain whatever may seem good in our 
eyes. If we do not succeed, disappointment pains 
us ; if we do, that which is gained is found to be 
shallow and empty : it is soon exhausted, soon ceases 
to please. Then we place our good in something 
else yet before us, which calls us to a new series of 
thoughts and labors. When this is gained the same 
disappointment meets us ; and we turn to some other 
object, to which distance lends enchantment, and 
which is clothed in the illusions of the sense and the 
mind. Thus we are ever seeking, and never finding. 
From the ashes of our ruined hopes, new hopes arise 
with more potent delusion. Earthly good, that 
which seems to be good in our own eyes, in ever- 
varying forms of beauty, lures us onward from one 
thing to another, as the butterfly leads the child a 
long and weary chase from flower to flower, and at 
last rises out of his reach. We fix our hearts upon 
earthly pleasure, and woo her with all the ardor of 
idolatry. But when she is won, we find her a loath- 
some corpse, a dead larva, who unveils herself not 
until the heart is married to her deformity. 

Most terrible yet most blessed is this experience. 
For when through it man has been led to feel, I can 
never more rejoice in any earthly good: all that 
this world can give, all that I can work out for my- 
self, is utterly empty, and unable to satisfy the deep 
craving of my soul, that is an hour of infinite pang, 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN* 203 

of indescribable woe. But from it he turns to Him 
who is the fuhiess of God, and there finds the peace 
of God which passeth all understanding ; the joy 
of God which is unspeakable and full of glory. 

This judgment therefore, inflicted upon the earthly 
nature of man, and upon the wisdom which stands 
at its head, and arising by consequence out of his 
sin, is a memorial and symbol of its nature and its 
folly, in that he has cast off* the Wisdom of God, for 
a guide of life wholly inadequate to distinguish 
aright between good and evil ; and following which 
he must continually see and choose as good, that 
which, when attained, he finds to be empty and un- 
satisfying as the east wind. 

But the spiritual life of man, consisting in the love 
of God, filled and satisfied with the holy perfections 
of God, nourished by filial obedience to his voice, 
has perished in the very act of transgression and 
rebelhon. Now this death must be reflected in that 
inferior and subordinate nature, and in its wisdom, 
by whose proud elevation over the Wisdom of God, 
he has sinned. Perhaps he has taken into his con- 
stitution the seeds of decay and death, in the fruit 
of the forbidden tree ; and now he must be deprived 
of the fruit of the tree of life, by which his health 
and strength might have been perennially nourished 
and sustained. Perhaps at the point where these 
two natures centre in unity, the death of the one 
passes over, so to speak, and becomes death in the 
other. By whatsoever means the judgment is exe- 
cuted by the ordination of God, it is certain that all 



204 or TIi-E rUDGMEN'T ITPOW MAN^ 

m man which was taken from the gi^ound is doomed 
to return, with pain and anguish and soiTow and 
darkness, to the ground again. 

This dissolution and death of the earthly nature 
in man, with the going out in utter darkness of its 
light, is the most terrible yet most sacred symbol 
that has ever been instituted and ordained of God, 
to embody, and place before our eyes, in visible and 
sensible form that spiritual death which man has 
brought upon himself by his sin. As a symbol it is 
continually used in the Scriptures. To be carnally 
minded is death. When the commandment came sin 
revived, and I died. In these, and in ten thousand 
kindred expressions, it is perfectly evident that what 
is signified by the word death, is not the mere disso- 
lution of the earthly nature in man, but something 
spiritual, of which the death of the body is but an 
outward form, to be to man a symbol, and to reflect 
it steadily back, with great power, into his soul. 

This symbol has been set up in his earthly nature 
because by it he was seduced into sin. It consists 
in the going out of the light of the sensual nature, 
because it has served as an ignis fatuus, to lead 
man astray. It comes upon him in spite of all his 
prudence and vigilance and toil, to make him know 
how inadequate is the guide of life which he has 
chosen to distinguish aright between good and evil. 
The great horror and darkness, in which the light 
of the mortal life goes out, is to reflect back into his 
mind and heart the knowledge and conviction of the 
horrible spiritual darkness into which he has sunk 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 205 

by sin. The pain and agony and sorrow of dissolv- 
ing nature symbolize and set forth the pain and 
agony and sorrow of eternal death — the worm that 
never dies, and the fire that is never quenched. In 
that death comes upon all, even upon infants, and 
those who have not sinned after the similitude of 
Adam's transgression, it symbolizes the truth, that 
spiritual death, truly and properly so called, in germ 
if not in full growth, is implanted in every soul of 
man that is born in the likeness of the father of the 
human race. For by one man sin entered into the 
world, and death hy sin ; and so death passed upon 
all men, for that all have sinned. That is to say^ 
the proof that spiritual death has come upon all men 
is that all do sin, and that its symbol, the death of 
the body, is set up in all. 

These tremendous symbols of the nature and con- 
sequences of the sin of man, set up by God in his 
earthly nature, were indispensable, both on account 
of their spiritual significance and chastising power, to 
his salvation from that estate to which he had now 
reduced himself. For if he had been allowed to re- 
main in the garden of Paradise, or had been sent 
forth into a world where his own prudence and fore- 
sight should have been adequate to preserve him 
from these things, soon he must have lost all consci- 
ence of sin ; and all memory of the high and blessed 
life from which he had fallen. Soon he would have 
come to regard his own wisdom as amply sufficient 
to guide him aright in the choice between good and 
evil, since it would have enabled him to supply all 



206 OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 

the wants of which he could have retained any feeling* 
His conscience, already weakened and dethroned, 
would have been put to silence by the unrestrained 
gratification of the lusts of his earthly nature, and 
would have ceased to give any oracles from the 
Wisdom of God. With the appetites, desires and 
affections of this nature in preternatural strength; 
with the means of their full gratification at hand ; 
their most intense and protracted pleasures unat- 
tended with pain or remorse ; the fear of death re- 
moved ; man would have been contented with the 
things of this earth. He would have sunk down into 
the rank of the brute, in everything pertaining to his 
moral and spiritual nature. One nature alone would 
have reigned within him, and that would have been 
at peace with itself. Internal conflict would have 
been impossible. All feeling of want would have 
perished. Thus his redemption would have become 
impossible by those means which God had chosen. 
For, as man is made, it is only through the feeling of 
want, nourished in the soul by these institutions of 
God, as symbols and as chastisements, and by other 
means, that he. retains the capacity of receiving what 
he needs — the restoration of that spiritual life which 
he has forfeited and lost by his sin. 

The great length of the mortal life before the flood 
must have weakened the presence and power of the 
symbol and chastisement of Death. It occurred so 
seldom, that its significancy could be lost. It could 
be regarded as so far off, that the fear of it ceased to 
deter from crime. Therefore man rushed into the 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 207 

most horrible excesses. The earth was polluted 
with violence and blood. Hence, when the time 
came for the promise that there should be no more 
flood, human life must also be shortened. Its brevity 
therefore, the frequency with which death occurs is 
one of the most urgent necessities of, one of the great- 
est blessings to, the human race while it continues in 
its sins. 

Also, now, when these symbols lose their power 
over the heart of man, hardened by its sins, he sinks 
into inevitable and irretrievable perdition. When 
the affairs of the mortal life prosper ; when men are 
comparatively free from care and toil and sorrow; 
when death is regarded as afar off; they lose almost 
all feeling of the want of anything better than this 
world can give ; all conscience of sin, and of the 
possibility of spiritual life. Their mode of being is 
described by the words. Soul, thou hast much goods 
laid up for many years ; take thine ease, eat, drink. 
The words of the Wisdom of God, Thou fool ! this 
night thy soul shall he required of thee, lose all the 
power of truth. The language of their hearts is, 
Give me all the pleasures of earth /or ever, and I ask 
no more. Often they live and die without any pain- 
ful conviction of sin, as if they had no soul. Their 
heart is as fat as grease. Their eyes stand out with 
fatness. They have no bands in their death. Of such 
it is said, and not of the possessor of money as such, 
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a nee- 
dle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of 
God. Therefore, Woe unto you that are full; and 



208 OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 

Blessed are ye poor. It is impossible for him who 
does not hunger and thirst after righteousness to be 
filled. 

But when man feels the thorn and the thistle in 
the flesh ; when he is worn down with the labor of 
the body, and exhausted with exertion of the mind ; 
when he is racked with pain, and pierced with disap- 
pointment ; when he is heart-broken with affliction 
and sorrow ; when death enters and lays his iron 
hand upon the most beautiful and best beloved of his 
heart ; when he beholds in others and feels in him- 
self the agonies of the dissolution of his earthly na- 
ture ; when he feels the light of the mortal life going 
out in utter darkness, then he knows that all is not 
right between him and his God ; then he feels the 
want of something which this earth cannot give, and 
sighs for the restoration of that spiritual life which he 
has lost, and which, as brought to light by Christ, 
cannot be subject to dissolution nor decay. To pro- 
duce this very eflfect indispensable to his salvation, 
and for which they have a power which no processes 
of reasoning can have, were these most terrible, yet 
most sacred symbols set up by God in man's earthly 
nature, in the bosom of the mortal life ; that by their 
chastising influence, and by their outward and visible 
reflection of the nature and consequences of his 
transgression ; of the inadequacy of the guide of dis- 
tinction between good and evil which he has chosen, 
and of the spiritual death which he has brought upon 
himself, the conviction of his sin and folly might be 
nourished in his soul : that the feeling of want might 



OF THE JUDGMENT UPON MAN. 209 

not perish out of his heart, and leave him to perish 
without remedy. 

Blessed be the thorn and the thistle ! Blessed be 
toil ! Blessed be sorrow ! Blessed be death ! 



210 OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 



CHAPTER XV. 

OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 

" Unto the man also and his wife did Jehovah God make coats of 
skms, and clothed them." 

God had not spared to inflict upon his offending 
creature the tremendous chastisement of labor and 
sorrow and death. Did he now go about to provide 
for him a good suit of clothes, by such extraordinary 
means as the shedding of the blood of innocent ani- 
mals, for no other purpose but to relieve him from a 
little bodily inconvenience ? This also is a symbol. 

In order that we may the better comprehend its 
significancy, it must be observed that here, in the 
garden of man's former innocence, as soon as he had 
sinned, God began that stupendous system of prepar- 
ation for the sacrifice of Christ, which he carried on 
with unswerving fidelity and rigor for four thousand 
years. Of this whole system the fundam.ental idea 
was, that without the shedding of blood was no re- 
mission of sin. Here he began it in the slaughter of 
the innocent for the guilty. From the account given 
of the sacrifices^ of Cain and Abel it manifestly 

* In the New Testament it is declared By faith Mel offered unto 
God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. The question here 



OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 211 

appears that this was already regarded as an institu- 
tion of divine appointment. Throughout the long 
line of patriarchs, from Adam to Israel, no other 
offering is ever made but that of an animal whose 
blood had been shed. At last, in order that the work 
might be perfected, God called the nation of the 
Jews out from all others ; isolated them from foreign 
influence, and set up among them that most wonder- 
ful ritual of bloody symbols, which is described in 
the book of Leviticus. Morning and evening, and on 
all extraordinary occasions in the lives of individuals, 
and in that of the nation, for fifteen hundred years, 

arises. What had been revealed by God which Abel believed, and in 
which Cain had no faith ? In order to find the true solution of this 
question it must be observed that the offerings themselves were 
different. Abel sacrificed an animal ; Cain did not. From this it 
might be presumed that God had commanded them both to oflTer 
bloody sacrifices. But this is not left to conjecture if we adopt that 
sense of the passage which is preferred by many Hebrew scholars, 
and which, it would seem beyond all doubt, is the true one. For 
in the words. If thou doest not well sin Heth at the door^ there 
seems to be little more expressed than the identical proposition. If 
thou sinnest, thou sinnest. But the word here translated sin is fre- 
quently used in the Scripture to signify a sin-offering ; and so it is 
elsewhere translated. But if it be so rendered here, the words of 
God to Cain, rebuking him because he was angry that his brother's 
offering had been accepted and his own rejected, become most sig- 
nificant, and reveal the true reason of the rejection of Cain's sacri- 
fice. Why art thou wroth ? If thou doest well shalt thou not he 
accepted! thou shalt surely be accepted. If thou doest not wellt a 
sin-offering is lying down at the door. If thou hast sinned the 
animal which I have designated as a sin-offering is lying down at 
the door of thy tent; that take, shed its blood, and offer it with the 
confession of thy sin, as I have commanded, and thou shalt be for- 
given, and accepted no less than thy brother. 



212 OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 

the victim bled with the confession of sin. It was 
only by dragging the innocent animal to the altar, 
confessing his sins over its head, and offering its life 
in place of his own that the Jew could obtain forgive- 
ness and reconciliation. Once a year, on the great 
day of atonement, the high priest, in the presence of 
the congregated thousands of Israel, made full con- 
fession of the sins of the whole people in their name 
with the shedding of blood, which he took and sprin- 
kled before the mercy seat of Jehovah between the 
cherubim in the Holy of Hohes. Everything be- 
longing to the worship of God was sanctified with 
blood, and without the shedding of blood was no re- 
mission. This idea which lay at the bottom of all 
the rites of the ceremonial law, was symbolized 
and reflected into the minds of the people from gene- 
ration to generation and from age to age, in every 
conceivable form, in order that they might be sur- 
rounded and filled with it, and moulded into its like- 
ness. Their whole life was made to revolve around 
it, that it might be instilled into them. It was an 
idea so strange, and even so revolting to human wis- 
dom, that God saw it to be necessary to reveal it to 
the human race with great signs and wonders and 
manifestations of his power and authority ; and to 
keep it steadily before the eyes of that people out of 
whom the great sacrifice was to arise, in order that any 
should be found to believe on him to spread his Gospel, 
when he should be revealed. For all this, as we are 
expressly told in the New Testament, was prepara- 



OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 213 

tory for him ; since it was impossible that the blood 
of bulls and of goats should take away sin. 

No less preparatory for that which was to be re- 
vealed in him, was the moral law. For by the very 
condition of that law, which was perfect obedience, 
it excluded man from salvation. This do and thou 
shalt live. Cursed be every one that continueth not 
in all things which are written in this law to do them. 
This condition man in his own strength never did, 
nor ever can fulfil, because the law comes to him 
demanding that it should never be violated not until 
he has already violated it. It finds every man a 
depraved being, and therefore incapable of perfect 
obedience by his own agency. It was not therefore 
given to do what it could not do^ but for another 
purpose, to be our schoolmaster to lead us to Christ. 
If a law had been given which could have given life, 
verily righteousness should have been by the law. 

Wherefore then serveth the law ? What is that 
precise effect which it was necessary to work in the 
heart of man in order that he should be prepared to 
believe in Christ, and thus come back to submission 
and obedience ? It was added because of transgres- 
sions until the Seed should come. The law entered 
that the offence might abound. Not that the law 
was given by God for the purpose of making man 
more sinful. God does not make his creatures sin- 
ful, nor more sinful ; but he saves them from their 
sins. But the law entered to bring out into con- 
sciousness and conviction, as sin, that evil pravity of 
nature in man which he does not recognise nor feel 



214 OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 

to be truly and properly sin until it goes forth in 
transgression of the law known ; that by this means 
he might come to the knowledge of sin within him, 
in its exceeding abundance. The law is the instru- 
ment of God to make him know and feel how sinful 
he is. Yet it is true, that the law is the occasion, 
though not the cause of man's becoming more sinful 
than he can be without it. But the sin of which it 
is only the occasion is not to be charged upon it, 
but upon that which is truly and properly its cause. 
For the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and 
just and good. Yet the commandment which was or- 
dained unto life, I found to he unto death. For when 
the commandment came, sin revived, and I died the 
death in trespasses and in sins. For sin taking oc- 
casion by the commandment deceived me, and by it 
slew me, that is to say, wrought in me all manner of 
concupiscence. Was then that which is good made 
death to me ? God forbid : but sin, the depraved, 
perverse evil nature, which was in me before the 
commandment came — this it was which was made 
death to me, that it might appear sin, be brought out 
and recognised as sin in this, its working death in me 
by that which was good, that sin by the commandment 
might become exceeding sinful. By the fact that 
man's evil nature abuses and perverts a good thing, 
the holy law of God, into an occasion of becoming 
more sinful, his depravity and exceeding sinfulness 
is demonstrated and made known to him. For by 
the law is the knowledge of sin. 

But how can this holy and just and go©d law of 



OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 215 

God become even an occasion of the revival of sin 
in the heart of man ? In virtue of that in him, vv^hich 
led Adam after he had sinned to fly from the presence 
of the Voice of God, and hide himself, thus adding to 
his sin. This law exhibits God in the attribute and 
attitude of justice, without mercy. Cursed he every 
one that continueth not in all things which are written 
in the hook of this law to do them. It comes to every 
man, who is born in the likeness of Adam, after he 
has sinned. It finds him in rebellion against its wis- 
dom and authority, and under its curse. It finds him 
blinded in his mind and hardened in his heart, so that 
he does not see nor feel the paramount authority of 
justice. He is now grounded and built up in selfish- 
ness, so that he cannot feel that justice is of more 
worth than his own well-being. He is not willing 
that justice should have its course at the expense of 
himself. The maxim. Fiat justitia, mat ccelum^ he 
would have inverted when applied to himself. Let 
his heaven stand even at the expense of justice. 
Hence the justice of God is to the sinner a terrible 
and hateful thing. It will not, because it cannot, 
allow of the least transgression. It thunders death 
to the transgressor. While through the law God is 
exhibited to him in the attitude of simple justice, he 
hates God ; he counts him his enemy. But to hate 
God is the highest development of sin. This is its 
last term. This is the life of spiritual death. Thus 
the commandment which was ordained unto life, he 
finds to be unto death. This inward and spiritual 
alienation from God was that in Adam which caused 



216 OP THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 

him to fly from his outward presence, under which 
act of the first man it is symbolized and set forth, as 
it takes place in every man. While this delusion in 
the sinner that God is his enemy continues, while this 
fear reigns over him, he must remain in his aliena- 
tion from God. He cannot, because he will not, and 
he will not, because he cannot, return to him in sub- 
mission, love and obedience. He is shut up under 
him by the law. Through it he receives the sentence 
of- death in himself; the judgment of God upon the 
Adam in him. This, also, is symbolized by the sen- 
tence of death pronounced upon the father of the 
human race, before he received from the hand of God 
a substantial covering for his nakedness and shame. 

This is the preparatory work of the moral law, 
and beyond this it cannot go. 

But if man be left here, he remains in his delusion 
that God is his enemy ; in his alienation and enmity, 
which leads him to fly further and further from God ; 
to plunge himself deeper and deeper into sin, and the 
perdition of sin. For in God's presence only are 
there joys for evermore. God is the root of his life. 
His true well-being consists and is found not else- 
where nor otherwise than in his presence, and in that 
union with God, of which confidence or faith, submis- 
sion, love and obedience are the legitimate fruits. 
Only the wisdom of God, received by faith or confi- 
dence in it, can be to him an unerring guide of choice 
between good and evil. Left here, therefore, man 
must perish for ever. He is lost. Hence, if he is to 
be saved out of his sin at all, he needs, he must have, 



OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 217 

a manifestation of God's gracious disposition towards 
him. He must be convinced that God is not his 
enemy. He must know that God's justice, which de- 
mands satisfaction, and which has already pronounced 
sentence of death upon the Adam in him, is not in- 
consistent with such love as would yet save him from 
his sins. Also, since he has sinned by such a conceit 
of his own wisdom as has led him, for its guidance, 
to cast off the authority of the Wisdom of God as a 
guide of life, and has thus fallen under the condem- 
nation of the justice of God, it is necessary that this 
manifestation of God's love to him which he needs, 
should be made through such means as shall satisfy 
the justice of God, and through such means that he 
cannot truly and from the heart believe in it, without 
having the pride of his own wisdom crushed, and it 
forced to confess itself a fool before God, and no 
longer to be trusted. 

What now is that grand d solemn mystery which 
demanded, or could be appropriately announced by 
such a stupendous scheme of preparation as this? 
What can be the appropriate end and fulfilment of 
a course of four thousand years of shedding the blood 
of innocent animals, and offering them up to God with 
the confession of sin ? What is that grand and solemn 
mystery, which can meet these spiritual necessities of 
the human race, by satisfying the justice of God, by 
manifesting his infinite love, and by crushing for ever 
the pride of man's wisdom ? Let God himself declare 
it, without the possibility of admixture with human 

devices. 

10 



218 of the clothing of skins. 

God so loved the world, that he gave his only 
begotten son that whosoever believeth in him 

SHOULD NOT PERISH, BUT HAVE EVERLASTING LIFE. He 
HATH MADE HIM TO BE SIN FOR US WHO KNEW NO SIN, 
THAT WE MIGHT BE MADE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GoD 

IN HIM. Whom God hath set forth to be a propitia- 
tion, THROUGH faith IN HIS BLOOD, TO DECLARE HIS 
RIGHTEOUSNESS FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS THAT ARE 

PAST THROUGH THE FORBEARANCE OF GoD TO DECLARE 

HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS THAT HE MIGHT BE JUST, AND THE 
JUSTIFIER OF HIM WHICH BELIEVETH IN JeSUS. He IS 
THE PROPITIATION FOR OUR SINS, AND NOT FOR OURS 
ONLY, BUT FOR THE SINS OF THE WHOLE WORLD. ThE 

Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all : 

AND WITH his STRIPES WE ARE HEALED. GoD COM- 
MENDETH his LOVE TOWARDS US IN THAT WHILE WE 
WERE YET SINNERS ChRIST DIED FOR US. FoR WHEN 
WE WERE YET WITHOUT STRENGTH, IN DUE TIME ChRIST 
DIED FOR THE UNGODLY. WhEN WE WERE ENEMIES, WE 

were reconciled to god by the death of his son. 
Great is the mystery of Godliness : God was in 
Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not 
imputing their trespasses unto them. 

This is the mystery of the gospel. As we have 
seen, it is impossible for man to perceive how the 
death of Christ in om- stead can satisfy, or in. any way 
relieve the justice of God for our sins. The logical 
explanations of it which men give, resolve themselves 
into the most transparent sophisms, under a pure and 
rigid analysis. It defies the wisdom of man. It is 
foolishness in his eyes. He is warned beforehand 



OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 219 

that it must appear to be foolishness to his wisdom. 
Yet he is assured upon the authority of the Wisdom 
of God, that it is not foohshness, but the truth and a 
fact ; that by the faith of it, as the truth and a fact, 
man's wisdom might stand confessed, a fool. This is 
the foolishness of the Cross, in the faith of which 
resides the power to crush the carnal mind, the head 
of the serpent in man, and to reduce his soul once 
more into subjection to the authority of the Wisdom 
of God. 

Also, In Him was the love of God manifested. 
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay 
down his life for his friends. Herein is love ; not 
that we loved God, hut that he loved us, and sent his 
Son to be the propitiation for our sins. This is the 
greatest and most powerful manifestation of the love 
of God for the sinner which is possible. That God 
should give his only begotten son to die for us — no- 
thing, beyond what is set forth by such an act as this 
is conceivable. Also, this is a love which is back of 
the atonement, as the cause is back of its effect. It 
does not originally depend upon the atonement; but 
the atonement depends upon it, and is its manifesta- 
tion. The atonement is the fruit and consequence of 
the love of God. Moved by this love, he devised the 
atonement ; he found the sacrifice in his only begotten 
son ; he laid upon him the iniquities of us all. The 
satisfaction which his justice demanded did not limit 
this love. In his infinite nature, justice and mercy 
and love are not inconsistent. The love of God is 
justice, and his justice is love. God is love. God 



220 OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 

loves his enemies even while they are enemies ; else 
he could not command us in order to be like him, to 
love our enemies. 

Now by what means man is brought to believe in 
this love of God, as manifested in the gift of his Son, 
is not here the question. But when once it is be- 
lieved in, not only is the wisdom of man confessed to 
be folly, in that it is brought to believe what seems 
to be foolishness in its own eyes, but also by this 
faith the delusion that God was his enemy is scat- 
tered to the winds. That fear which arises out of 
the shame of conscious sin, and which drives him 
from the presence of God into deeper and deeper 
alienation and enmity, is destroyed ; and he receives 
boldness to return to the only source and fountain of 
his spiritual life and well-being. Nay, he is in some 
sort, sweetly forced into repentance. For by this 
manifestation of his love, which God has made, in 
that he himself has found a sacrifice and ransom for 
the soul of man, in the blood of his own Son, he fol- 
lows the sinner out into his alienation and rebellion 
and enmity, and proclaims his love to him there to 
soften his heart, to take away his fear, and to win 
him back to life. Here the sinner first learns against 
whom, and what manner of love, he has sinned. 
That God should love him while he was innocent 
does not seem strange. But here he learns that, 
although the justice of God demanded satisfaction, 
yet God has never been alienated from him in the 
spirit of his mind. From the moment when he be- 
gan to rebel, God had prepared an atonement for his 



OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 221 

sin, through which in due time he would manifest 
that eternal love, which moved him to lay the sins of 
man upon his own Son. Even in the terrible sen- 
tence of death pronounced by the Voice of God 
through the law upon the Adam in him, God was 
moved by love. That condemnation and death itself 
was a blessing, only he did not then know it. And 
it was even necessary that this knowledge should be 
withheld from him then, in order that the sentence 
of death should be executed, that he might truly die 
unto sin. By this proclamation of his love to the 
sinner, God heaps coals of fire upon his head to melt 
him into repentance. He overcomes evil with good. 
His love overcomes and kills the sinner's enmity. 
For when, believing in this love which is declared by 
the gift of the Son of God, he learns that the God 
against whom he has been sinning, is One who has 
so loved him, as to find an atonement for his sins ; 
and that too, since nothing else would do, in the 
sacrifice of his own Son, that he might save his 
soul from perdition — this it is which brings out his 
sin as something so inexcusable, unreasonable, malig- 
nant, loathsome, and abominable, that repentance 
seems to come into his heart of itself. This reveals 
such an unfathomable depth of love in God, that it 
has, where it is believed, an overwhelming soul-sub- 
duing power. It melts the most obdurate and rebel- 
lious heart into penitence and humiliation as soon as 
it is believed. By it man is broken down. His 
evil is overcome by the omnipotence of God's good- 
ness. His enmity subdued by the omnipotence of 



222 OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 

God's love. He may stand in the pride of his heart, 
and refuse to recognise the presence of his God, while 
the wind and the earthquake and the fire rage around 
him. But when he hears .that still small voice, / have 
redeemed thee with the sacrifice of mine only begotten 
Son, he wraps his face in his mantle, and bows his 
head. His rebellion ceases. God has conquered. 
And this is that which has given him the victory, 
even his love, revealed in Jesus Christ. 

Thus by the atonement of Christ the justice of 
God is satisfied, the love of God is manifested, 
through such means, as that by the faith of it, the 
pride of man's wisdom is crushed, and he recon- 
ciled in the spirit of his mind to his Heavenly 
Father. The fear of conscious sin no longer drives 
him from the presence of his God. Now he can 
return to God. The righteousness of Christ, in his 
obedience, sufferings and death for him, becomes as 
a garment to cover his nakedness and shame, to blot 
out, to put away his sin. And he cannot return in 
any other way. He must have peace with God in 
order to love God. He must love God in order to 
please him by obedience. He must submit to his 
Wisdom, and obey its guidance in the choice between 
good and evil, in order to choose aright and live. 
The faith of God's love towards us, as manifested 
through the gift of his Son, is the only spring and 
generator of our love towards him. We love him 
not otherwise than because he first loved us. For, 
although the character of God is infinitely worthy 
of love for its own sake, yet it cannot reach a sinner 



OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 223 

depraved and blinded so as to be known, except 
through the faith of this declaration, God commend' 
et/i his love towards us in that lohile we were yet sin- 
ners Christ died for us, Man must have justifica- 
tion before he can have sanctification. This is the 
doctrine the loss of which St. Paul represents as 
fatal to his countrymen. And here is the reason why 
the early Reformers represented the doctrine of 
justification by faith as Articulus vel stantis vel ca- 
dentis Ecclesice. 

Unto this faith afterwards in due time to be fully 
declared, man was shut up, by the system of bloody 
sacrifices for sin, and by the operation of the moral 
law, or in other words, the law of distinction between 
right and wrong, upon his heart and mind. These 
truths of the gospel were symbolized or expressed 
from the time that the first man was covered by the 
hand of God, in the skins of slaughtered animals 
until the Seed came. Immediately upon the Fall 
they are set forth under the symbol of the clothing 
with skins, precisely in the order in which they were 
afterwards to be declared. 

For, as we have seen, the shame of man's naked 
body arose out of, and became the symbol of his 
new feeling, the inward and spiritual shame of con- 
scious sin. His girdle of fig-leaves was the symbol 
of his attempt to disguise and palliate his sin, to 
cover it from his own eyes, and from the eye of God. 
It did not succeed. He needed a better covering 
than any which his hands could provide. He was 
still naked, ashamed and afraid. His flight from the 



224 OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 

presence of God to hide himself was but the outgo- 
ing and manifestation of his aUenation from God, 
increased by his fear ; in which God was regarded 
as his enemy, and the justice of God was terrible 
and hateful to his soul. The Voice of God pro- 
nouncing upon him the sentence of death was the 
symbol of that inward and spiritual sentence of 
death pronounced by the law, that sentence of death 
in himself which Paul received, and which every 
one must receive upon the Adam in him, whenever 
he is reached by the Voice of God through the law. 
And now, what was the object, what must have 
been the effect upon the mind and heart of Adam, of 
the act which followed, together with the promise 
which had been declared by God in the curse upon 
the serpent ? How must this have destroyed his 
delusion that God was his enemy ; and convinced 
him that the heart of God was still full of pity and 
mercy and love towards his erring creature ! It was 
as much as to say in words, and by act more express- 
ive than words, I do not hate you, O Man, though I 
condemn your sin and folly. I love you, though you 
have despised my love. Behold my love in this that 
I have determined not to leave you in your ruin. 
Your enemy shall not triumph over you, although you 
have put yourself into his hands. I will crush his 
head, and utterly destroy his power. By the Seed 
of the woman herself ; of her who was first in the 
transgression, I will triumph over him ; and you shall 
also triumph through me. But seek no more to cover 
your sin from me. You must lay bare the nakedness 



OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 225 

of your soul to my eyes. I must judge the evil that 
is in you to destroy it out of you. In my judgment 
alone can you have any hope of salvation from your 
sin, and from its terrible perdition. All that you can 
devise and do is, and must be, for ever in vain to 
cover your shame, and take away your fear. I must 
do this for you. But seek no more to comprehend 
and justify in your eyes my Wisdom in that w^hich I 
do. It demands the submission of your mind. Your 
sin is of such horrible magnitude, that it cannot be 
put away by any means which your wisdom would 
choose. An innocent victim must suffer in your 
stead ; must hear your sin, and carry your trans- 
gressions. This is foolishness in your eyes ; not so 
in mine, because my wisdom is better than yours now 
blinded by your sin. Therefore cease from your 
own wisdom ; submit to me, follow my Wisdom in 
all things. Lo ! I give you the sign of this thing. — 
And in that form which he had chosen to commune 
with his creature, God lays hold upon the innocent 
animals ; pours out their life unto death ; and with 
their skins yet reeking with the blood of life, himself 
covers the nakedness, and puts away the shame of 
man. — Behold, I have covered your naked body, 
which made you ashamed and afraid in my presence, 
and caused you to fly from me, by the slaughter of 
the innocent for you. I have found an innocent vic- 
tim and sacrifice for your sin. I have put it away 
and covered it from my eyes. Here learn that I am 
not your enemy ; that I love you, and have provided 
the covering that you need to appear in my presence. 
10* 



226 OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 

Therefore seek no more to fly and hide yourself from 
me. The chastisements which I have laid upon you 
are the fruits of my love. Return to me in the spirit 
of your mind ; in confidence, love, and obedience. 
For under my guidance only can you choose aright 
between good and evil. Left to your own ways which 
you have chosen, you must perish for ever. I am 
the root of your life, you are a branch. I am the 
head of which you are a member. 

Thus when man had received the sentence of 
death in himself from the Voice of God ; when his 
own covering for his nakedness had been stripped off; 
when his own excuses and palliations for his sin had 
been consumed by the flame of God's searching and 
righteous judgment, made known in his heart and 
conscience, then, and not before, he received this seal 
of grace, mercy and love, to melt him into repent- 
ance ; to win him back to union with his heavenly 
father in love, that he might be saved from his sin. 
God covered with his own hand his naked body, the 
shame of which had made him afraid, and driven 
him to fly and hide himself, to signify that he only 
can, and that he truly does, cover and put away the 
sin from which that shame has arisen. This cover- 
ing was not an apron or girdle of flimsy fig leaves ; 
but garments or robes of the skins of beasts, the 
most substantial and durable material, to signify that 
the covering which God provides for the sinner is 
complete and perfect, wholly the work of God, an 
everlasting righteousness ; which once and for ever, 
where it is received by believing in it, takes away 



OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 827 

that shame and fear which drives the deluded soul 
from his presence and from Hfe. These garments 
God provided not otherwise than by the sacrifice of 
innocent animals, to symbohze the truth that the 
righteousness which only can effectually cover the 
sin of man, must be found in the sacrifice of the 
innocent for the guilty, even of the Lamb which was 
slain from the foundation of the world. 

From this act of God, in which he clothed man in 
the skins of beasts to put away the shame which had 
made him afraid, a countless number of expressions 
in the Word of God derive their origin and signifi- 
cancy. For as the shame of the naked body is con- 
stantly taken in the Word as the symbol of the 
shame of conscious sin, so the covering of nakedness 
is the favorite expression to symbolize the forgiveness 
of sin. The righteousness of Christ, in his obedience, 
sufferings and death, is continually set forth under 
the symbol of a garment. Thou wast naked and hare ; 
I passed hy, and I spread my skirt over thee, and 
covered thy nakedness ; yea, I sware unto thee, and 
entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord 
God, and thou becamest mine. Woe to the rebellious 
children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not 
of me; and that cover with a covering but not of 
my Spirit, that they may add sin to sin. He that 
covereth his own sins shall not prosper. Blessed 
is he whose sin is covered. Thou hast covered all 
their sins. He hath covered me in robes of right- 
eousness. That I might win Christ, and be found 
in him, not having on mine own righteousness, 



228 



OF THE CLOTHING OF SKINS. 



which is as filthy rags, hut the righteousness of God. 
I counsel thee to huy of me white raiment, that thou 
mayest he clothed, that the shame of thy nakedness 
do not appear. 



or THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE. 229 



CHAPTER XVI. 

OF THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE. 

*• And Jehovah God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, 
to know good and evil ; and now, lest he put forth his hand and 
take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever There- 
fore Jehovah God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till 
the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; 
and he placed at the east of the garden. Cherubim, and a flaming 
sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of 
life." 

Had man actually obtained the object of his insane 
ambition ? Did the experience of sin and evil into 
which he had plunged himself, and by which alone 
he now differed from his former estate, render him 
more like God, who cannot he tempted with evil, than 
he had been before ? If now he was acquainted with 
evil, how had he become more like God in knowing 
good as well as evil ? For to confine the force of 
expression to know good and evil, to knowing evil 
alone, is a manifest violation of its plain and obvious 
sense. Or are these words, Lo ! the man has become 
as one of us to know good and evil, words of high 
and solemn irony ? 

This figure of speech which is called irony, is much 
more frequently used in the Scriptures than is com- 
monly supposed. The words of our Lord to his dis- 
ciples, when returning from his agony in Gethsemane 



230 OF THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE. 

he found them sleeping, are ironical.* The whole 
parable of the unjust steward is certainly a strain of 
terrible irony. f But if these examples seem to be 

* " Sleep on now and take your rest : behold, the hour is at hand, 
and the son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners." If he 
had meant them to sleep on, would he have addressed to them a 
speech which, in order to have any effect, must wake them ? Also 
in the next verse he says, '' Arise and let us be going : Behold, he 
is at hand which doth betray me." Here he gives the same reason 
for their awaking and going which he had just given for their sleep- 
ing and taking their rest — that he their Lord and Redeemer was 
about to be betrayed. If this were a good reason for their awaking, 
it could not be a good reason for their sleeping. But if the former 
words be understood as ironical, the passage is relieved of all diffi- 
culty. Surely this is a proper time for you to sleep when your Lord 
is just about to be betrayed and crucilied ! Arise and let us be 
going ; your Lord is about to be betrayed. 

t The character of the unjust steward should be carefully observ- 
ed. His Lord has called him to account for negligence and waste, 
and is about to deprive him of his office. In order to provide for 
himself now, he connives with his master's debtors to defraud him. 
He has not wit enough to conceal his dishonesty. It is found out. 
This is the character held up as a model for the disciples of Christ. 

Now let us suppose this to have taken place before our eyes. 
What is there in this man's conduct to be commended .'' Not his 
fidelity as a servant ; for he is too lazy to work, too proud to beg ; 
and, as the wiser course, has betaken himself to forgery and steal- 
ing. But it is his prudent foresight which is lauded by his master. 
Did a master ever think of praising a servant for prudent foresight 
exercised in defrauding ? But what is there even of adroitness or 
cunning, to say nothing of rational foresight in what this man had 
done ? Just such as a lawyer would manifest, if, when a bill or note 
is put into his hands to be collected, he should keep to himself a 
third or fourth part of its amount. This any fool can do ; and no 
man in his senses, when he should find his agent employed in such 
practices, would ever think of commending him for his foresight. 

In applying this parable, the Lord says to his own true disciples, 
who have utterly renounced this world, '* And I say unto you, make 



OF THE BANISHMENT PROM PARADISE. 231 

doubtful to any, there are others which do not admit 
of doubt. Rejoice^ O young man, in thy youth, and 

to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness ; that when 
ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations." Now 
when shall the disciples of Christ fail, so as to have need of anything 
that the mammon of unrighteousness can give them ? Where did 
the mammon of unrighteousness, in whatsoever sense that expres- 
sion may be taken, get everlasting habitations to give the disciples 
of Christ ? 

That these are words of high and solemn irony is evident from 
what follows. For immediately, lest he should be mistaken, the 
Lord drops this figure of speech, as is almost always done in the 
Scriptures, and in the most direct and pointed manner warns his 
disciples against following this man's example. ** He that is faith- 
ful in that which is least, is faithful also in much ; and he that is 
unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. If therefore ye have not 
been faithful in the unrighteous mammon," as this man was not, 
" who shall commit to your trust the true riches ?" " If ye have not 
been faithful in that which is another man's," as this unjust steward 
was not, ** who shall give you that which is your own ? No ser- 
vant can serve two masters." ** Ye cannot serve God and mam- 
mon." 

By carefully attending to the truths, which by way of application, 
Jesus himself draws from this parable, it will be seen that it is 
spoken against covetousness, not to recommend foresight. For 
these truths can be drawn from it only by understanding that the 
conduct of this proud, lazy, covetous fool, is held up as the very 
opposite of true wisdom and prudence; as something in every par- 
ticular to be abhorred. For this unjust steward utterly failed to 
gain what he sought. Is it to be supposed that his Lord allowed 
him to keep what he had so dishonestly appropriated to himself.^ or 
that, after such a specimen of his fidelity, he restored him to the 
stewardship ? What then did he gain by his very prudent fore- 
sight ? And the application of the words, " The lord commended 
the unjust steward because he had done wisely, for the children of 
this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light," 
becomes such as this, surely your Lord shall commend and reward 



232 OF THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE. 

let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and 
walk in the ways of thy heart and in the sight of 
thine eyes ; hut know that for all these things, God 
will bring thee into judgment. The former part of 
this address is ironical. In the latter part the irony 
is dropped as usual, that it may not be mistaken. It 
is as much as to say, Rejoice not O young man in 
vanity ; walk not in the ways of thy heart, nor in 
the sight of thine own eyes, according to thine own 
wisdom, because for all these things God will surely 
bring thee to a terrible reckoning. The same figure 
is used by the prophet Elijah in his famous address 
to the priests of Baal. Cry aloud, for he is a god ; 
either he is talking or he is pursuing, or he is in a 
journey, or per adventure, he sleepeth, and must be 
awaked. Thus in the most powerful manner he sets 
before the deluded idolaters, the grossness of their 
folly and sin, in calling upon him as a god, who could 
neither talk, nor hunt, nor move from one place to 
another, nor even sleep. 

you for such conduct as this, if you can conceive that a man should 
praise his servant in such circumstances ! Surely it is wise for you 
to follow this man's example, since the children of this world, who 
walk in utter darkness, are so much wiser than the children of light 
who are illuminated by the Holy Ghost, and walk in the Wisdom 
of God ! 

This view is still further confirmed, if that were necessary, by 
the fact, that " the Pharisees who were covetous," immediately 
perceived that this parable was spoken, not to recommend foresight, 
but against them, and they derided him. This led him to follow 
them up with another, that of the rich man and Lazarus, which re- 
bukes them for the same love of mammon which is rebuked in the 
parable of the unjust steward. 



OF THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE. 233 

Also, it is to be observed, that God is frequently 
represented as mocking, in order to reveal, the gross- 
ness of that folly which is contained in all the sin of 
man, the preference of his ow^n vs^isdom before the 
Wisdom of God. Because ye have set at naught all 
my counsel, and would none of my reproof, I also will 
laugh at your calamity, and mock when your fear 
Cometh. When the heathen plot against the Lord 
and his Anointed, seeking to cast off the bands of his 
authority, they are said to imagine or devise vain 
things. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh ; 
the Lord shall have them in derision. 

If now we recur to the account before given of what 
man beheld after he had eaten of the fruit of the forbid- 
den tree, we shall perceive that his eyes were opened 
indeed, but not to know good and evil. Their eyes 
were opened, and they knew that they were naked. 
And since it is perfectly evident that by the experi- 
ence of sin and evil, man became in no respect more 
like God than he had been before, but that the image 
of God in him was marred instead of being rendered 
more perfect, the expression, Lo ! the man has be- 
come as one of us to know good and evil, may, like the 
preceding examples, be taken as words of high and 
solemn irony. They are spoken to describe and 
make known, the greatness of man's folly, as it ap- 
peared to the Wisdom of God. They reveal the 
truth that, as God beheld man's presumptuous and 
insane attempt to know good and evil by his own 
wisdom, it was a miserable failure. They are as if 
Jehovah had said. Indeed, man has succeeded in be- 



234 OF THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE. 

coming as one of us ! The creature of yesterday has 
raised himself to equality with his Creator ! The 
worm has indeed become a god ! He has plunged 
himself into death. How art thou fallen from heaven 
O Lucifer, Son of the morning ! How art thou cast 
down to the ground ! For thou hast said, I will as- 
cend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the 
stars of God, I will be like the Most High, Thou 
shah be brought down to hell. 

In order now that man may submit to the chastise- 
ment inflicted upon him by God, he must be driven 
forth from the garden to till the ground, out of which 
he was taken. The home and outward reflection of 
his innocent and holy and happy life, is no longer a 
fit abode for his sinful nature, upon which has come 
the judgment of toil and sorrow and death. The tree 
of life, the sacrament and symbol of that spiritual life 
which has been nourished by the obedience of his 
own agency, under the guidance of the Wisdom of 
God, must be forbidden to him in order that by its 
fruit his earthly nature may not be freed from the 
punishment of death. He has now violated the truth 
of which it was the symbol, and has no longer any 
right to the sacrament of it, which can now be no- 
thing better than a form, and must be powerless for 
his spiritual good. He must not linger around that 
tree, sighing to retrace his steps, to undo what is 
past, but go forth and submit himself to all the evils 
of the earthly lot which he has brought upon himself, 
that he may learn by bitter experience how inade- 
quate is the guide of life which he has chosen, to dis- 



OP THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE. 235 

tinguish aright between good and evil. Therefore 
Jehovah God drove out the man. 

And he placed at the east of the garden, Cherubim 
and ajiaming sword which turned every way to keep 
the way of the tree of life. What is there in this ex- 
treme care and rigor with which the tree of Hfe was 
guarded from Adam, which is of universal signifi- 
cancy and application ? What is the truth for man 
as such, here symbolized 1 

In order to perceive what this is, we must observe, 
that innocence once lost, never can be recovered, 
because it consists in never having sinned. The 
redeemed saints now in glory are not, and never can 
become innocent, because it can never be true of 
them that they have not sinned. This is as much as 
to say, in other words, that man having lost his spi- 
ritual life cannot regain it by the obedience of his 
own agency. Having once sinned, and being left to 
his own agency, he must go on to sin for ever. For 
sin is something spiritual, and back of all actions. 
The sin of Adam even was back of his act of eating 
the forbidden fruit. It was that state of heart, that 
spiritual disposition from which this act arose ; of 
which the act of disobedience was but the outgoing 
and manifestation. Much more therefore in us, and 
universally, sin is that in the agent himself of which 
outward sinful acts are but the manifestation and 
symbol. It is even back of the thoughts. Jesus him- 
self points us to something back of the thoughts as 
the place where sin originates. Out of the heart pro- 
ceed evil thoughts. Sin is therefore that in the thinker 



236 OF THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE. 

himself of which sinful thoughts are but the out- 
going. 

But, as we have seen, every act of human agency, 
whether of desire, thought or volition, reflects upon, 
and enters into the agent himself. By it he is changed. 
Hence after the first sin, he enters into subsequent agen- 
cy different from that which he was before. His inward 
and most spiritual character is changed for the worse. 
He is vitiated, depraved in his nature. All his follow- 
ing acts are modified in their character by the first act 
of sin. After he has once conceived evil within him- 
self, all that he can do by his own agency purely, 
must partake of that original evil. Sin defiles the 
agent himself, the fountain of all conceivable acts, 
and thus defiles all the stream which flows from that 
fountain. It corrupts the heart, out of which are the 
issues of the life, and thus corrupts the whole life. 
It changes the character of the will, the root of all 
actions, and thus causes all the fruit to be changed 
for evil. It perverts the nature of the vine, and thus 
perverts the nature of all the branches. Hence it is 
utterly impossible for man to return to life by the 
obedience of his own agency. He can of himself do 
nothing which has the least tendency to save him 
from his sins. For all that he can do, or think, or 
feel, must flow out of a heart already polluted, de- 
praved, defiled by sin. And who can bring a clean 
thing out of an unclean ? Without me ye can do 
nothing. When we were yet without strength, in due 
time Christ died for the ungodly. We are not suffi- 
cient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves. 



OF THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE. 237 

It is the idea, that it is not absolutely impossible for 
man to retm-n to life by the obedience of his own 
agency which St. Paul opposes under the form of 
justification by works. It is perhaps, the most diffi- 
cult of all things for man to receive the conviction, 
that, although some things may be less displeasing to 
God than others, it is utterly impossible for him in his 
own strength to do anything which is not tainted with 
sin, and therefore accursed from the presence of the 
Lord. It is hard for him to be brought wholly to 
despair of his own agency. And the loss of the 
feeling and conviction that sin is something back of 
all actions from which they spring, is even yet under 
the Gospel, the most fatal of all mistakes into which 
Christian people fall. For this it is which prevents 
men from feeling that it is sin, in this spiritual sense, 
from which they must be saved by Christ, if they are 
ever saved at all. It blinds them to the knowledge 
of what that is in which the Salvation of the Gospel 
consists ; that it is to become holy within as well as 
without ; to be like Christ. Hence they look to him 
as to one who has purchased forgiveness for them 
in an external and legal sense, rather than as to him 
who saves them from their sinfulness. They are 
prone to think that if they will do as well as they 
can, God will forgive them where, through human 
infirmity, they do err and come short ; and there 
they rest satisfied. As well might a man whose 
vitals a cancer is eating away, be content when the 
physician tells him he will remove some of its 
branches, and forgive him the operation necessary to 



238 OF THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE. 

eradicate the whole. For this reason man seeks to 
excuse himself for his sin, to prove to himself and 
others that he is not so much to blame for his trans- 
gressions. As wisely might he labor to excuse him- 
self for having taken poison, when it is raging in his 
system, instead of applying to the antidote. Sin is 
not only that which brings man into condemnation 
before God. It is also a fatal disease ; it is poison to 
his nature. It is death. Myself am hell. Forgive- 
ness from God for all a man's sins in a legal sense, 
announced to him by name in a voice from heaven, 
can do him no manner of good, except as the neces- 
sary means of purifying his spiritual nature from sin 
itself, by reconciling his heart to God in love. For 
this purpose indeed it is indispensable. But the very 
moment that the pardon of sin, in a purely legal 
sense, becomes the object of a man's desires and 
seeking, rather than deliverance from sin itself, or 
for any other purpose than as the necessary means 
of salvation from sin, it becomes an idol which must 
lead its deluded worshipper into shame and everlast- 
ing contempt. 

Because the sin of man is something spiritual, 
back of all actions, consisting in a depraved and 
perverted nature of the agent himself, which not only 
brings him under condemnation of the righteous 
judgment of God, but also partakes of the nature of 
a spiritual disease, he cannot by the obedience of his 
own agency return to spiritual life. He must be 
brought to despair of helping or healing himself. 
For that which would heal is precisely the thing 



OF THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE. 239 

which is diseased. He must feel himself to be help- 
less, without strength. Until he feels this, he is always 
lingering around the tree of life, trying to be saved 
by eating of its fruit. He is continually trying to do 
something which may be pleasing to God ; when 
this is impossible except to an innocent and unde- 
•praved being. Hence he is always baffled, defiled 
more and more by the conscience of sin. To de- 
stroy this illusion, to reduce him to the conviction 
and feeling of his helplessness in his sins ; to make 
him know that he is dead in trespasses and in sins, 
the law was given. Feeling this, he is emptied of 
himself, so to speak. His self-trust, and self-right- 
eousness, and all hope from himself, are destroyed. 

Thus only can man be prepared for the new life, 
which is already prepared for him in Christ ; and his 
mind and hopes turned to such expressions of the 
Wisdom of God as the following. The Lord our 
Righteousuess, In the Lord have I righteousness and 
strength. He is in some sort forced to look away 
from himself to him who of God is made unto us 
Wisdom and Righteousness and Sanctification and 
Redemption, He questions with himself what those 
words which follow should mean. Without me ye 
can do nothing, I am the vine, ye are the branches. 
Ye are the body of Christ, The spirit of God dwelleth 
in you. Ye are the temple of the living God, Christ 
in you the hope of glory, Christ is in you, except ye 
be reprobates. It is God who worketh in you, both to 
will and to do of his good pleasure. We are not suffi- 
cient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves 



240 OF THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE. 

hut our sufficiency is of God, Christ liveth in me. 
The power of the truth here declared, hke every 
other truth, is to be reahzed in act and hfe, not other- 
wise than by first beheving it upon the authority of 
the Word of God. That authority is to overcome 
all cavils and objections of the carnal mind. But as 
soon as it is believed, that these words, Christ is in 
you except ye he reprohates, do describe a truth and 
a fact, out of, and through the faith of that truth, 
springs up a new life, and a new strength, which is 
nothing else but the life and strength of the Spirit 
of Christ in man's soul. The belief of this truth is 
the secret of godliness. The divine energy and 
success of Paul in the service of his master, was the 
unwavering faith of the truth which he declares in 
the words, It is not I that live, hut Christ that liveth 
in me. I can do all things through Christ which 
strengtheneth me. No man ever yet successfully 
contended with, and overcame the temptations of 
the world, the flesh and the devil, who did not be- 
lieve what John declares in the words. Greater is he 
that is in you, than he that is in them. No man can 
live who will not believe the truth which Christ re- 
veals to him in the declaration, / am the life. 

This life of Christ in man is wholly a new life, 
different from, and in its perfection inconceivably 
more excellent than that of his original innocence. 
Where sin abounded grace does much more abound. 
This life is not nourished by the obedience of man's 
agency, as was the life of Adam. It must be erected 
upon the crushed ruins of man's agency. It must be 



OF THE BANISHiMENT FROM PARADISE. 241 

implanted in the death of that nature in which man 
has sinned, and which is now depraved. Man must 
be crucified with Christ ; be baptized into his death, 
that he may Hve with him and by him. To estabhsh 
and maintain this new Hfe, the simple guidance of the 
Wisdom of God in the choice between good and 
evil is not sufficient. To follow that guidance man 
has now, of himself, no strength, no will, no desire. 
He needs a wisdom, a righteousness, a strength, a 
will not his own, yet united to him, and revealed in 
him. He needs an agency revealed in him which 
is not his own, to choose and obey for him. This 
is Christ in man who chooses and obeys, of whose 
obedience all that is good in man's aflfections, 
thoughts, volitions and actions, is but the conse- 
quence, the outgoing and manifestation. He brings 
into mian his own perfect everlasting righteousness^ 
that unto him might be all the praise and glory of 
salvation. This is the life of God in the soul- of 
man. This in its perfection is salvation from sin, 
and there is no other. 

Now, the tree of life from which Adam was shut 
out, stood fast beside the tree of the knowledge of 
good and evil. It was the sacrament and symbol of 
his life of innocence, whose joy was the consequence 
and reward of the obedience of his own agency unto 
the guidance of the Wisdom of God, in his choice 
between good and evil. That life was lost past all 
hope of redemption. Innocence and the fruit of in- 
nocence had perished for ever. Man must not linger 
around that tree hoping to derive any spiritual bene- 
11 



242 OF THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE. 

fit from its fruit. To eat of it now can be nothing to 
him but a form of obedience. He must turn away 
his eyes from it. Every hope of Hfe by his own 
obedience must be rooted out of his heart, before he 
will humble himself to receive the free gift of salva- 
tion through the obedience of another, for, and in 
him. He must submit himself to the sentence of 
death which has been pronounced upon him ; must 
be baptized into death in a spiritual sense, in order 
that he may live. Now he must look to other sym- 
bols to learn how he may receive a new life. In 
the agony and flowing blood of the innocent animal, 
in its flesh consumed with fire upon the altar of God 
— in these he must find the symbol of the truth that 
only in being baptized into the death of the innocent 
Lamb of God can he have life. But so unconquer- 
able is now his delusion and depravity that he and 
all his posterity will be continually seeking to return 
to life through the outVv^ard form of obedience. To 
warn him, and through this symbol, all his posterity^ 
against this, which must always be fatal; to teach 
man that to return to life by the way of the obedi- 
ence of his own agency is for ever impossible ; that 
the attempt to do it must be fatal to his only hope of 
life ; the cherubim and the flaming sword which 
turned every way, were set to guard the way of the 
tree of life. By this fiery sword, must every one 
who seeks to be justified by his own works, to obey 
by his own strength, to walk by his own light, to live 
by his own life, be slain and consumed. 



OF THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE. 243 

From this life nourished and maintained by the 
obedience of his own agency man must look away 
to the new righteousness and the new life, which must 
be generated, nourished and perfected by the indwell- 
ing in him of the Spirit of Christ. This life is not 
only more excellent than all that he has lost, but it is 
sure to all the seed. For the Spirit of Christ enters 
into a unity with the spirit of the believer, so intimate 
and vital, that the two are properly said to be one. 
He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit with him, 
Jesus himself declares to his disciples that they are 
one with him, as he is one with the Father. Because 
I live ye shall live also. All glory be to his holy 
name ! It is just as impossible for them to die, as it 
is for him. This life therefore cannot be lost as was 
the former in Adam. It depends not upon the falli- 
bility of man's discernment between good and evil ; 
nor upon the mutability of his will. It depends not 
upon man's weakness or strength. The covenant is 
well ordered in all things and sure. The mercies of 
David are sure. It depends upon the choice and 
obedience of him who has united himself with his 
people, so as to become one with them ; of him 
whose wisdom cannot err, whose faith cannot fail, 
and whose strength has already overcome all his and 
our enemies. Therefore it is that when this symbol, 
the tree of life, is introduced again in the close of the 
history of humanity, now saved from sin, it stands in 
the midst of the street of the New Jerusalem, come 
down from heaven to earth, on either side of the 



244 OF THE BANISHMENT FROM PARADISE. 

river of life, which issues out of the throne of God 
and the Lamb, and beside it is no longer the tree 

OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. 



THE END. 



M. W. DODD, 

PUBLISHER AND BOOKSELLER, 

Corner of Park Row and Sjn'iice Sts., o2)2^osite City Hall, 
NEW YORK, 

PUBLISHES AMONG OTHERS THE FOLLOWING: 



CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH'S WORKS. 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
BY MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, 

AND A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHORESS. 

2Vols. 8vo., 

WITH SEVERAL ILLUSTRATIONS, 

ENGRAVED EXPRESSLY FOR THE WORK. 

The Publisher invites the attention of the public to this 
new Edition of one of the most popular and useful writers 
of thepresent aoje. It contains upwards of 1500 large octavo 
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To the attractions of our former Editions we have added 
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to any library." — Albany Argus. 

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THE ATTRACTION OF THE CROSS. 

The Attraction of the Cross, designed to illustrate the 

leading; Truths, Oblip:ations and Hopes of Christianity. 

]]y GarcUner Spring, D.D. 12mo. Fourth edition. 
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DR. RfCHARD^S LECTURES. 

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18mo. 

" This is a work whicrh will repay many a reading. In force of reason- 
ing, felicity of illustration, and i)0wer of application and conclusion, it 
will commend itself to the strongest intellect: while the Christian will 
be convinced, that the Rev. author, instead of loAvering the standard of 
divine graces and duties, raises it to the highest point of Christian excel- 
lence and to the perfections of God, so that the true disciple of Christ will 
be led to humble himself before God, and repent daily in dust and ashes, 
of his involuntary sins of omission and commission." — Alb. Spectator. 

NEVINS' SERMONS. 

Sermons. By the late Vi^illiam. JVevins, D. D. With a 
finely engraved portrait. 12mo. 

UNION TO CHRIST. 

By Rev. R. Taylor. 18mo. 

NON-CONFORMITY TO THE WORLD, 

BY THE RENEWING OF THE MIND. 
By Rev. G. JV. Judd. 32mo. 

FRAGMENTS; 

PROM THE STUDY OF A PASTOR. 
By Gardiner Springs D, I). 12ino. 

5. 



Books Published and for Sale by M. W. Bodd. 

CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH'S WORKS. 

IN ISmo. VOLUMES. 
JUDAH'S LION. 

" In a sprightly, well-Avritten narrative, containing scenes of high dra- 
matic interest; it portrays the character and hopes of the Jews in their 
dispersion, and points to the means which may be blessed in restoring 
them t > the faith of Abraham, in the true Messiah." — Phila. Observer. 

'' Individuality of character is faithfully preserved, and every one is 
necessary to the plot. The reader will find in this book much informa- 
ti m that he can only find elscAvhere by very laborious research. Char- 
lotte Elizabeth is a firm believer in the national restoration of the Jews 
to the possession of Palestine, but believes they will previously be con- 
verted to Christianity. We advise our friends not to take up this book 
until they can spare time for the perusal; because, if they commence, it 
will require much self-denial to lay it down until it is fairly read 
through." — Christian Adv. and Jour. 

THE FLOWER GARDEN. 

A collection of deeply interestino; Memoirs, beautifully 
illustrated under the similitude of flowers. 

SECOND CAUSES ; 

OR, UP AND BE DOING. 

" We consider this little volume before us one of the best practical 
works from the pen of this popular writer. It presents a series of inter- 
esting illustrations of the efficacy of that faith which looks above and 
beyond second causes, and relies for support on the word and promises 
of God." — Christian Observer. 

FALSEHOOD AND TRUTH. 

"A beautiful and instructive volume, worthy to be put into the hands 
of all children and youth, as a choice token of parental solicitude for 
their preservation from insidious errors, and the establishment of the 
truth as it is in Jesus. Few there are indeed of any age who can read it 
v.'ithout equal profit and pleasure." — Boston Recorder. 

CONFORMITY. 

ii vVe read this little volume with great and unqualified satisfaction. 
We wish we could induce every professor of religion in our large cities, 
and indeed all who are in any way exposed to contact with the fashiona- 
ble world, to read it. The author, in this little work, fully su.itains her 
high reputation as a very accomplished and superior writer, and the 
staunch advocate of Evangelical principles, carried out and made influ- 
ential upon the whole life and conduct." — Epis. Recorder. 



Books Published and for Sale by M. W, Dodd, 

THE DESERTER. 

*' We have never (we speak advisedly) read a story that more entirely 
enchained us than this. We are not quite sure how much of it is 
fancy, and how much flict ; but we rather suppose that the outline is 
veritable history, while the filling up may have been drawn partly from 
the author's imagination. The principal hero of the story is a young 
[rishraan, who was lead through the influence of one of his comrades, 
to enlist in the British Army, contrary to the earnest entreaties of his 
mother, and who went on from one step to another in the career of crime 
till he was finally shot as a deserter ; though not till after he had practi- 
cally embraced the Gospel. The account of the closing scene is one of 
the finest examples of pathetic description that we remember to have met 
Aith. The whole work illustrates with great beauty and power the 
iownward tendencies of profligacy, the power of divine grace to subdue 
(he hardest heart, and the encouragement that Christians have never 
to despair of the salvation, even of those who seem to have thrown 
themselves at the greatest distance from divine mercy." — Albany Daily 
Citizen. 

" This is one of the happiest efforts of this exceedingly popular writer. 
Its great aim appears to be to exhibit the truly benevolent influence of 
real piety upon the heart of man, as well as the degrading nature of sin. 
The narrative is admirably sustained — the waywardness of the unre- 
generate exhibited in living colors, and so interspersed with sketches of 
the 'soldier's life,' as to add a thrilling interest to the whole. It forms 
a neat library volume of near -250 pages, and is handsomely printed and 
bound in cloth." — Auburn Joiirnal. 

" One of the happiest productions of the author. The narrative is 
well sustained, and the personages and character are true to nature " 
— Commercial Advertiser. 

COMBINATION^ 

" This is a tale, founded on facts, from the gifted pen of Charlotte Eliz- 
abeth. It is well written, and contains the very best of advice. It lays 
down with great force the mighty truth, that without Religion there 
can be no virtue ; and that without the fear and love of God, man Vv^ill 
« inevitably be dashed on the rocks of iiredeemable ruin. Religion is the 
Sheet Anchor, the only protection to hold by in the hour of violent 
temptation ; but if that be lost, all is over. Such little works as these 
are eminently calculated to produce a vast amount of good ; and there- 
fore let the heads of families place them upon their table for the benefit 
of their children. 

" In no better way could an evening be spent than by having it read 
aloud, that a warning may be taken from the folly of others, and that 
the course which has led them to ignominy and disgrace may be most 
carefully avoided. " — Boston American Traveller 

THE DAISY— THE YEV/ TREE^ 
Chapters on Flowers. 

Three most delightfal little volumes, made up in part from 
her very popular Flower Garden Tales for those who prefer 
them in smaller volumes- 

(7> 



Boohs Published and for Sale by M. W. Dodd, 



CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH'S WORKS CONTINUED. 

NA^RONGS OF NA^OMEN. 

Part I. . * Milliners and Dressmakers ;' TI. * The 
Forsaken Home ;' III. ' The Little Pin-Headers ;' 
IV. ' The Lace Runners.' 

" Is no-w published in handsomely bound Tolumes by M. W. Dodd. 
These are the most popular and intensely interesting stories from the 
ever-moving pen of Charlotte Elizabeth, and we are desirous to see them 
widely read. They are eminently calculated to awaken sympathy for 
the oppressed and the poor, and we therefore take pleasure in calling to 
them the attention of our kind-hearted readers." — N. Y. Observer. 

"This volume contains Charlotte Elizabeth's most graphic, truthful, 
and pathetic expressions of the ' Wrongs of Women.' She has come out 
as the champion of her sex, and if they have no such wrongs to be re- 
dressed in this country, they have thousands who sympathize with their 
enslaved sisters in Great Britain." — lb. 

'- The authoress of the ' Wrongs of Women/ Charlotte Elizabeth, has 
portrayed them in terms of exquisite pathos and heart-moving tender- 
ness. Eloquently and forcibly has she denounced the inhuman policy 
out of which they have grown ; and with all the susceptibilities and 
overwhelming influences of woman's alTectionS; she approaches the sub- 
ject in the hope of being able to bring some alleviation, some mitigation 
of the mental and physical degradation of her sex." — American (Boston) 
Traveller. 

DANGERS AND DUTIES. 

'•' This volume is fall of thrilling interest and instruction. Those who 
commence, will not be content till they have finished it, and they will 
find instruction presented in a form so irresistibly attractive and en- 
chanting, that they will read it throu.gh, and wish it longer still."-— 
Christian Advocate. 

PASSING THOUGHTS. 

" Few volumes of 156 18mo pages, contain a greater amount of valuable 
thought happily arranged to secure attention and promote reflection. 
The anecdote of George III., p. 53, is new to us, as are indeed several 
other illustrations, but they are striking and beautiful. Books like this 
cannot be too widely circulated nor too frequently read. They supply 
heavenly aliment to the weak, useful medicine to the sick, and safe sti 
mulus to the healthy and the strong." — Boston Recorder. 



We also publish in elegant library style, illustrated with 
Steel Engravings, what to all intents and purposes may be 
considered a complete edition of the Works of this popu- 
lar Authoress. The edition is comprised in upwards of 
1500 large octavo pages. 

3 



Books Published and for Sale by M, W, Dodd. 



JUD/EA CARTA. 

* Judsea Capta,' the last offering from the pen of this gifted and pop- 
ular writer, will be esteemed as one of her best works. It is a graphic 
narrative of the invasion of Judea by the Roman legions under Vespa- 
sian and Titus, presenting affecting views of the desolation of her towns 
and cities, by the ravages of iron-hearted, bloodthirsty soldiers, and of 
the terrible catastrophe witnessed in the destruction of Jerusalem 
The narrative is interspersed with the writer's views of the literal ful 
filment of prophecy concerning the Jews, as illustrated in their extra- 
ordinary history, and with remarks contemplating their returning pros- 
perity. Her occasional strictures on the history of the apostate Josephus, 
who evidently wrote to please his imperial masters, appear to have 
been well merited. The work is issued in an attractive and handsome 
volume." — Christian Observer. 

"If the present should prove to be Charlotte Elizabeth's last work, 
she could not desire to take her departure from the field of literature 
with a better grace ; and we doubt not that it will be considered, if not 
the best, yet among the best of her productions. It is full of scripture 
truth, illustrated by the charm of a most powerful eloquence ; and no 
one, we should suppose, could read it without feeling a fresh interest 
in behalf of the Jewish nation, and a deeper impression of the truth 
and greatness, and ultimate triumph of Christianity." — Albany Daily 
Advertiser. 

"This volume contains a description of some of the most terrific 
scenes of which this earth has been the theatre. But instead of con 
lem plating them merely as a part of the world's history, it takes into 
view their connection with the great scheme of Providence, and shows 
how the faithful and retributive hand of God is at work amidst the 
fiercest tempest of human passion. The work contains no small por- 
tion of history, a very considerable degree of theology, and as much 
beautiful imagery and stirring eloquence as we often find within the 
same limits. Those who have the other works from the same pen, 
will purchase this almost of course ; and they need have no fear that 
it will disappoint any expectation which its predecessors may have 
awakened." — Albany Religious Spectator. 

Also just published — 

"THE CHURCH VISIBLE IN ALL AGES." 

A work, making attraction to the youthful as well as the 
more mature mind, a deeply mteresting and important subject. 



All the' foregoing are printed on clear, white paper, and 
bound to matchi making an attractive and beautiful set of 
books. They are sold in sets or separately, varying from 
25 to 50 cents per volume. When purchased for Sabbath 
Schools, a liberal deduction is made from the above jprices. 
(8) 



Books Published and fur Sale by AL \V. Dodd. 

IN ADDTION TO THE FOREGOING IS ALSO PUBLISHED, 
MEMOIRS OF REV. JOHN WILLIAMS, 

Missionary to Polynesia. By Rev. Ebenezer Prout, of Hal- 
stead. 1 vol. l2mo. 

"Mr. Dodd has published a fine edition of Prout's Memoirs of Rev 
John WiUlams, Missionary to Polynesia. The lives of few men afford 
more ample material for an instructive and interesting biography than 
that of Williams. His ardent, energetic, and successfuriabori as a 
Missionary of the Cross, are almost without parallel. His self-denying 
and eminently prosperous efforts in Polynesia have been extensively 
before the public in the ' Missionary Enterprises^' and the friends of 
missions every where hold him in affectionate and melancholy re- 
membrance as the 'Martyr uf Errom.anga' The author of the Me- 
moir now published, has, without drawing largely upon the facts with 
which the Christian public are already fomiliar, produced a volume 
of intense interest. The work is not merely the eulogy, but the his- 
tory of the active and efficient life of a man whose works constantly 
spoke his praise, even to the hour of his tragic death We take p''=^a- 
sure in commending the excellent mechanical execution of the v>l 
ume." — 

MEMOIR OF THE LIFE, LABORS, AND EXTENSIVE 
USEFULNESS OF THE REV. CHRISTMAS EVANS, 

A Distinguished Minister of the Baptist Denomination in 
Wales. Extracted from the Welsh Memoir by David Phil- 
lips. 1 vol. l2mo. With portraits. 

" One or two specimens of the preaching of this celebrated Welsh 
divine have been extensively read in this country, and have been suffi 
cient to mark the author as a man of extraordinary genius. We are 
glad to know more of him. The memoir before us gives a succmt 
account of his life and labors, and presents the portraiture of a man 
of great talents, eminent piety, and most amiable character. There 
are also several specimens of his writings which are exceedingly in- 
teresting, an] an account of the origin, iiature, and influence of San- 
demanif^niftm, of which Evans was well nigh a victim, more complete 
and satisfact« ry than any thing we have ever seen, except Andrew 
Fuller's wor\ on the subject. The memoir is a valuable addition to 
our stock of /eligious rcLiing. It is well printed, ana adorned with a 
portrait of B mns, the features of which are Welsh enough."— iV. -Y, 
Evangelist. 

THE AD\'ANCEMENT OF RELIGION THE CLAIMS 
OF THE TIMES. 
By Andrev^ Reed, D. D., with a Recommendatory Introduc- 
tion by Gardiner Spring, D. D. 1 vol. i2mo. 
Dr Spring says, " At the request of the publishers I have paiJ some 
attention to uie work of Dr. Reed, with the view of expressing my 
humble judgment of its merits. The reverend author is favorably 
known to th« churches of this country, and iV's work will deirati 
nothing fr(tm his reputation. 

(3i 



Books Fublished and for Sale by M, W. Doda, 

THE BOOK THAT WILL SUIT YOU 5 

Or a Word for Every One. By Rev. James Smith, Author ol 
" Believer's Daily Remembrancer," &c. 

"An elegant little hand book of some 300 pages 16mo., and by an En 
fllsh author Its contents are a rare selection of topics, treated briefly 
o suit the circumstances of those who have fifteen or twenty minutes 
,o spend in reading, which it would be wicked to throw away, and yet 
Jiscouraging to commence a heavier volume. ' The Successful Mo 
laer,' 'The Child's Guide,' 'The Husband's example,' 'The Wife's 
Rule,' — these are some of the topics taken promiscuously fn m the 
book ; and they show the author's mind to be travelling in the right di 
rection, viz. : towards the theory of life's daily practice. We hope 
that the time is near when Christian parlors will be emptied of 'The 
Book of Fashion,' ' Somebody's Lady's Book,' etc., etc., made up of 
love stories mawkishly told, and other drivelling nonsense ; and their 
places supplied with works like the ' Book that will Suit you' — no less 
pleasing, and far more useful." 

GRACE ABOUNDING TO THE CHIEF OF SINNERS, 

In a faithful account of the Life and death of John Bunyan, 
pp. 176. 

*' We are pleased to see a very handsome edition of this admirable 
treatise. It is just published, and will be eagerly sought after by all 
who admire the spirit and genius of this remarkable man whose ' Pil- 
grims Progress' stands nearly if not quite at the head of religious lite- 
rature." 

KIND WORDS FOR THE KITCHEN ; 

Or Illustrations of Humble Life. By Mrs. Copley. 

"This admirable little volume is the production of Mrs. Esther 
Copley, (late Mrs. Hewlett,) whose popularity as an authoress has long 
been established upon both sides of the Atlantic. The welfare of that 
interesting and important part of society who discharge the domestic 
duties of life has long engaged the attention of this distinguished and 
accomplished lady. 

"We have read the 'Kind Words for the Kitchen,' with a firm con- 
viction that it is the best work we have ever seen in so small a com 
■pass for its designed purpose ; it suggests all that a sense of duty would 
lead the head of a well regulated household to advise, and having 
loaned the book to ladies distinguished for their judgment and skill as 
heads of well-governed families, they have urged its publication with 
a few omissions of matter deemed inappropriate to our country. 

" We believe almost every Christian lady will be glad to place such a 
manual of sound instruction in the hands of her domestics, and that 
which is kindly bestowed will generally be gratefully received. With 
an assurance that the general diffusion of this book would accomplish 
a most valuable service in binding together more closely the interests 
of the employer and the employed, and softening down the asperities 
which so frequently grow out of the ill performed duties of the house- 
hold sphere, we should rejoice to know that this little volume wai 
placed by the side of the Bible in every Jiitchen of our country.' 



Books Published and for Sale by M. W. Dodd, 

With Dortions of it I have been exceedingly interested, as throwing 
together very important thoughts upon the most important topics of 
religious instruction, well arranged and favorably expressed. The 
work evidently cost the author time, effort, and prayer, and it is well 
worth the labor and solicitude it cost. Whoever reads it will be abun- 
dantly compensated, and if he reads it with the spirit with which it 
was written, cannot fail to become a more enlightened and useful 
Christian. The object and aim of the writer is not a selfish one, but it 
is to do good. He takes a wide range, and yet having read the work 
the attentive reader will find that the substance of it is easily remem- 
bered. If our churches and our ministers would possess themselves 
of its principles and imbibe its spirit, they would have less cause to 
lament the decay of vital godliness, either in their own hearts, their 
families, or their congregations. 

"The publisher deserves commendation and encouragement for the 
attractive form in which he presents this volume to the public, and I 
take great pleasure in recommending it to all who purchase books for 
the sake of reading them." 

PRAYERS FOR THE USE OF FAMILIES; OR THE 
DOMESTIC MINISTER'S ASSISTANT. 

By William Jay, author of Sermons, Discourses, &c., &€. 
From the last London Edition. With an Appendix, con- 
taining a number of select and original Prayers for partic- 
ular occasions. 1 vol. l2mo. 

"This volume has been long looked upon as one of the best collec- 
tions of devotional exercises for the domestic circle, that has been 
published, and by a large class of Christians we doubt not that it is 
considered invaluable. "The present edition will be still more desirable 
to American Christians, who will not fail to thank the publisher for 
the fine form in which he has presented it." — Courier 6f Neio York 
Enquirer. 

A GOLDEN TREASURY FOR ' -^"'» HREN OF GOD. 

Consisting of Select Texts of the Bible, with Practical Obser- 
vations, in Prose and Verse, for every day in the year. By 
C H. V. Bogatzky. A new edition, carefully revised and 
corrected. 1 vol. 16mo. 

"This is a reprint of a work written by a Polish Clergyman more 
than a century ago. We have seldom met witn a work more admir- 
ably suited to the religious wants of families than the work before us. 
There is a lesson for every day in the year ; a portion of Sorijiture ia 
taken and such reflections are given as the text suggests. Tnose fam- 
ilies who are in the laudable habit of calling their household together 
in the morning cannot do better than procure this work. The por- 
tion assigned foi each morning lesson is short, but full of the true 
spirit of Christianity, and could not fail to have a salutary influence 
upon tue thoughts and actions of the day. It is got up in the style of 
HU'i.tnce for which the publisher, M. W. Dodd, is so well known.'* 

(4) 



BonJf9 Published and for Sale by M. W. Dodd, 

SERMONS, NOT BEFORE PUBLISHED, ON VARIOUS 
PRACTICAL SUBJECTS. 

By the late Edward Dorr Griffin, D. D. 

" Dr. Griffin may be regarded as having been a prince among the 
princes of the American pulpit. He left a large number of sermons 
carefully revised and ready for publication, part of which were pub- 
lished shortly after his death, but the greater portion of which consti- 
tute the present volume. They are doubtless among the ablest dis- 
courses of the present day, and are alike fitted to disturb the delusions 
of guilt, to quicken and strengthen, and comfort the Christian, and to 
serve as a model to the theological student, who would construct his 
discourses, in a way to render them at once the most impressive, and 
the most edifying." 

A MEMOIR OF THE REV. LEGH RICHMOND, A.M. 

Rector of Turvey, Bedfordshire. By Rev. T. S. Grimshaw^ 
A. M., Rector of Curton-Latimer, &c. Seventh American 
from the last London Edition, with a handsome Portrait on 
Steel. 

" We have here a beautiful reprint of one of the best books of its 
class, to be found in our language. Such beauty and symmetry of cha- 
racter, such manly intelligence and child -like simplicity, such official 
dignity and condescending meekness, such warmth of zeal united with 
a perception of fitness which always discerns the right thing to be 
done, and an almost faultless prudence in doing it, — are seldom found 
combined in the same person. It is a book for a minister, and a book 
for parishioners ; a book for the lovers of nature, and a book for the 
friends of God and of his species. Never perhaps were the spirits and 
duties of a Christian Pastor more happily exemplified. Never did 
warmer or purer domestic affections throb in a human bosom, or exer- 
cise themselves more unceasingly and successfully for the comfort, the 
present well-being and final salvation of sons and daughters. From no 
heart probably, did ever good will flow out to men, in a fuller, warmer 
current. In a word, be was the author of the ' Dairyman's Daughter,' 
and the * Young Cottager.' 

" The engraved likeness of Mr. Richmond alone is worth the cost of 
the work : as illustrative of the uncommon benignity that adorned and 
endeared the man to his friends and the world." 

UNCLE barnaby; 

Or Recollections of his Character and Opinions, pp. 316. 

" The religion of this book is good— the morality excellent, and the 
mode of exhibiting their important lessons can hardly be surpassed in 
anything calculated to make them attractive to the young, or successful 
in correcting anything bad in their habits or morals. There are some 
twenty chapters on as many common sayings and maxims, occurrences 
and incidents — in this respect bearing a resemblance to ' the Prompter, 
a somewhat oracular book forty or fifty years ago. It is an excellent 
book to keep in a family, and may be alike beneficial to parents and 
children." 



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